
Class 

Book 

Gopyilghtl^^. 



X 



COP^'RIGHT DEPOSIT. 



I 

(Honatxtttim 
Mnnh MxxtmtB 



ir. Ax?l fmil ($\hmn 



n 



Destructive and Constructive 
Food Mixtures 



Destructive and (construct 
r ood JVlixtures 



ive 



By THE AUTHOR OF 

"Prolonging Life Through Diet," "Sugar and Salt — 
Foods or Poisons," "Life and Death of Diet" 
"Psychology of Child-life," "Individ- 
uality in Diet," etc. 



"In my practice as surgeon I am impressed by the alarming 
increase of cancer cases lately brought to my notice — an increase 
•which, in the light of general hygienic and sanitary improvements 
of our time, can have no other cause than en indulgence in certain 
food^uffs detrimental to the norman life of the body. 

DR. CHAS. MAYO 

Rochester, Minn. 






Copyright 1914 

By DR. AXEL EMIL GIBSON 

Los Angeles, Cal. 



FEB 2 1915 



'^ 



<> 

'H 

■+ 
§ 



To PROF. EDWARD B. WARMAN, A. M. 

for his untiring helpfulness as 
friend, teacher and example, — 
is this volume dedicated 
by the author 



INDEX 

Page 
Preface 7 

I. Self-indulgence, and the Law of Evolution 9 
II. Egotism as a Factor in Diet 12 

III. The Scientific Reasons for and against the 

Mixtures of Different Cereals 15 

IV. What Food to be Cooked, and What not 

to be Cooked, to Insure the Best As- 
similation and Nutrition 18 

V. The Process of Digestion — an Electric 

Phenomenon 20 

VI. Mixture of Fruits and Vegetables — Its 

Effect on Digestion 25 

VII. Soups 3j 

VIII. Gravies 2)7 

IX. Pastry 39 

X. Meat as a Factor in Diet 45 

XI. Sugar— a Friend or Foe to Human Life? 51 
XII. Milk as Food, and Milk as Poison 61 

XIII. Prof. Metchnikoflf and the Sour Milk 

Bacillus 54 

XIV. How Certain Combinations, such as Milk 

and Fruit, Fruit and Cereals, Milk and 
Meat, Affect Digestion and Nutrition 69 
XV. The Effect on the System of Ice Cream 

and Malted Milk J^ 

XVI. Can the Chefs and Captains of our Kitchen 
be Trusted with our Physiological 
Welfare 77 



Page 
XVII. The Failure in Depending on Symptoms 

for a Diagnosis of Digestive Disorders 81 

XIX. The Only Royal Road to Diet 85 

XX. The Right and Wrong Side of Coffee 87 

XXI. How to Attain the Greatest Degree of 

Efficiency 92 

XXII. Diet for the Lean and for the Fat 99 

XXIII. Obesity 103 

XXIV. Practical Health-Culture for the Busy Man 107 
XXV. Specified Bill-of-Fare for one Week's Hy- 
gienic Diet Ill 

XXVI. Remarks, Reminders, Summary 117 

1. Drinking at Meals 117 

2. Eating between Meals 118 

3. How to prepare a Scientific Mayon- 

naise 119 

4. The Different Effect on the System 

between Vinegar and Lemon Juice 119 

5. Starchy Food for the Child and for 

the Man 121 

6. Quick Guide to Hygienic Food Com- 

binations 122 

7. The Role of Bread in the Bill-of-Fare 123 

8. Individuality in Diet 124 

9. Quantity and Quality in Diet 125 

10. The Problem of Salt in Diet 128 

11. Yougurth, and its Dietetic signifi- 

cance 130 

12. The "Dreadnought"— Stimulant 133 

13. Dietetic "Don'ts" 136 



PREFACE 



This book is written for those who are seri- 
ously looking for light on the obscurities of 
diet. The world is full of sufferers who have 
sinned against the laws of diet through ignor- 
ance of facts. For the complexities of modern 
life, with its staggering artificiality in every 
expression of living — where the natural in- 
stincts and cultured restraints are lost in a 
whirlpool of desires and unnatural appetites — 
it is a task of no ordinary magnitude for the 
individual to succeed in selecting with calm 
and unerring mind the food-stuffs conducive 
to his health, strength and usefulness. 

Such a power of selection is attainable only 
on a basis of knowledge concerning the vital 
factors involved in the relation of certain food- 
stuffs to physiological chemistry — and, fur- 
thermore, in his moral courage and determina- 
tion of will, to live up to this knowledge. For 
the power of truth, like any other power, is ob- 
tainable only through practical application. 

The great majority of mankind is still in 
ignorance of the conditions that lead to a thor- 
ough and permanent enjoyment of perfect 
health — an ignorance which alone makes pos- 
sible a traffic in the life-inimical food-prepara- 
tions that constitute the principal dishes in 
our public and private bill-of-fares. It has 
become a tradition in the social household, 
that the very fact of the existence of a food 

7 



mixture — no matter how hygienically unrea- 
sonable — is a warrant for its right to be en- 
joyed. Vox populi vox Dei has not only its 
field of application in the political and social 
world, but also in a presumptions kitchendom, 
where the voice of the cook almost holds the 
prerogatives of the voice of God. 

It seems to be a law in our present mongrel 
type of life, that the wisdom of health shall be 
taught by the lesson of disease, and only those 
that have paid the severe penalty of the latter, 
shall be able to realize the profound signifi- 
cance of the former. It seems, that only at a 
certain point of suffering, the individual finds 
the insight and the power to shake himself 
loose from the thralldom of a sensuous, whim- 
sical appetite, and stand ready to sacrifice the 
transitory joys of the palate, for the posses- 
sion or re-posession of that sustained flow of 
exuberance, that triumph of efficacy, and that 
radiance of feeling and good will, which ac- 
comi3any all true health. 

It is in the realization of this fact — the 
supreme importance to human life and useful- 
ness of an adequate knowledge concerning the 
principles underl^dng our food-stuffs and their 
destructive and constructive mixtures — that 
this book has been produced. It projDOses to 
offer a practical health-guide to the individual 
who takes his life seriously, and who is desir- 
ous to know the laws of health, not in order to 
evade them, but to obey them. 



CHAPTER I. 



SELF-INDULGENCE AND THE LAW OF 
EVOLUTION 



We have been accustomed to regard the 
products of nature as the legitimate prey for 
human self-indulgence, while comprising as 
such every whimsical notion of cookery, rang- 
ing from the indefinable mixtures and culinary 
disguises of French cookery, down to the 
crude, simple form of home cooking, which in 
an unreliable taste has its only guide, and in 
exterior cleanliness its only virtue. For clean- 
liness, no matter how near its comes to godli- 
ness, in matters of diet, nevertheless, is a very 
unreliable protection for a diseased stomach 
or kidney, over against the ravages generated 
from a promiscuous and unhygienic mixture 
of foodstuffs. 

If it is true that the individual has a 
moral and biologic right to everything brought 
within his power of enjoyment, — the drunk- 
ard, opium-eater and cigarette-fiend, are 
equally entitled to their life-destroying indul- 
gences. If human life and habit should be 
gauged only by the range and power of indi- 
vidual opportunity, regardless as to physio- 
logical and sociological need and usefulness, 

9 



civilization and progress would inevitably run 
into degeneracy. 

The fundamental and reassuring force in 
human evolution lies in the power and willing- 
ness of the individual to assert self-restraint 
in his relation to environments. For in this 
effort to resist the purely animal promptings 
of his sense-nature, the individual finds the 
mainspring and lever for an unhampered evo- 
lution of growth and power, as it is the very 
friction between the personal and the univer- 
sal, between the individual will and the uni- 
versal will, that brings out the inherent finer 
forces of human nature. The unresisted 
down-slide along the slippery path of sensual 
self-indulgence permits of no new evolution of 
energy to restore and reconstruct the dissi- 
pated emotions in the cyclic decline. The ego- 
tistical utilization of environmental oppor- 
tunities, — without any other gauge or consid- 
eration of life than the power of an individual 
to appropriate and indulge, — saps the vital 
essence out of every nerve fibre, until stopped 
by the very fury of its consuming, insatiable 
desire, which by the exhausture and impotence 
of his nature, puts a limit to his excesses. 

The very position of the individual as a 
free, willing agent in evolution; — the very fact 
of his endowment with powers and opportuni- 
ties of universal application, is in itself a sign 
and demonstration of the responsibility with 
which he has been vested. The animal, lacking 

10 



this power of will and self-restraint, also lacks 
the opportunity of unrestricted indulgence, as 
its functional and structural limitations, chain 
it to fields and conditions promotive of its evo- 
lution; — while to man the realm of nature is 
laid open, and a key offered him to the freedom 
of every domain. 



11 



CHAPTER II. 



EGOTISM AS A FACTOR IN DIET 



This invitation to the human being to take 
charge of every aspect and condition of nature 
holds in its very acceptance a pledge of trust 
and responsibility. For in this fact of being 
trusted lies the certainty that in case of delin- 
quency nature has recourse to methods of 
checking and readjusting, by which the indi- 
vidual, sooner or later, is compelled, in terms 
of enforced renvmciations, to redeem his own 
pledges. Progress itself would be meaning- 
less and untenable were it not for this inescap- 
able Nemesis of evolution, driving out the in- 
dividual transgressor from his intrenchments 
in this guerilla war with his moral obligations. 
Hence the individual is free only within the 
bounds of law; — i. e., only within the limits of 
the integral, full-orbed expression of his bio- 
logic, physiologic and moral nature; and thus 
while vested with the potential rulership of 
his personality, is yet under the restrictions 
of his constitutional limitations. His acts are 
weights, thrown into the scales of life and 
death, health or disease; and the conditions of 

12 



his nature will show the extent to which he is 
able to effect a readjustment or equipoise of 
his evolutionary balance. 

In this critical position, however, the indi- 
vidual is not left without guidance. Reason, 
if heeded and obeyed, is as reliable a counsellor 
to the individual mind as the instinct is to the 
animal. But the test as to the sanity and 
safety of an enjoyment must ever be found in 
its degree of usefulness to the system of the 
individual. If a foodstuff does not lead to in- 
creased health, strength and usefulness, it is 
wrong to eat it. For food should have only 
one object: to render the eater physically 
more capable to serve his fellowmen. The 
ways of evolution, like those of the gospel, are 
two only: God or mammon, health or disease, 
manhood or beasthood. The result of any in- 
dulgence faces us in processes of appropriate 
retribution : either in form of digestion or fer- 
mentation — of nutrition or poisoning. 

It is the egotism of the human creature 
that prompts him to regard every effort and 
expression of nature as specially produced for 
him and for his personal enjoyment. Mankind 
has yet to learn to regard the display of na- 
ture 's riches with equanimity and imperson- 
ality, as fulfilling other aims and destinies 
than to be sacrificed to the mere whims and 
notions of an eccentric appetite. It was Emer- 
son who made the observation that it ex- 
presses more love for a flower to enjoy its 

13 



beauty on the field — a joy for all — than to 
carry it off as a personal possession. 

This desire to possess for its own sake, is 
manifested in every aspect of human life, and 
lies back of every dietetic transgression of the 
individual. No sooner does his eye fall upon 
a thing, tempting to his appetite, than he 
wildly desires its possession and indulgence. 
He forgets that nature is not more made for 
man, than man is made for nature. He forgets 
that there is a purpose in Nature all her own, 
and that her output, while incidentally for the 
benefit of man, is essentially for the benefit of 
her own life and progress. Hence the menu 
which evolution prepares for man is made up 
of things needful for his existence, rather than 
stimulating to his cravings. Necessity is the 
gauge of evolution, and obedience to its man- 
dates the inevitable condition for all health, 
power and usefulness. 



14 



CHAPTER m. 



THE SCIENTIFIC REASONS FOR AND 

AGAINST THE MIXTURES OF 

DIFFERENT CEREALS 



''What God hath united shall men not sep- 
arate/' with its logical implication: what God 
hath separated shall men not join together — 
are statements as true when applied to natural 
relations, as to social and domestic ones. 
There is a positive relation between the human 
body — its needs and necessities — and the enti- 
ties of environmental nature, growing around 
us. Hence each grain of a certain class of ce- 
reals differs in elemental composition from 
the grains of any other cereal. The oat has a 
molecular arrangement and atomic constitu- 
tion altogether different from the barley; and 
the rye and wheat are grains with physiologi- 
cal peculiarities all their own. In our official 
composition-tables, standardized by the vari- 
ous foreign or domestic laboratories, we find 
only the gross constituents of grain values, 
while their vital-magnetic forces are ignored. 
And yet every grain is a radio active agent — a 
fullorbed, complete, magnetic entity, charged 
with powers and qualities, definitely related 
to specific needs of the human constitution. 

15 



They enter the system as carriers of specific 
functional values, and engage the fluids and 
ferments of the digestive and nutritional sys- 
tem in accord with their own vital-magnetic 
charge. 

A combination of different grains at the 
same meal must therefore result in a disturb- 
ance of digestive and nutritional harmony, 
and consequently fail to accomplish the result 
in health and power which the digestion of 
grains of a single species would have accom- 
plished. Being differently polarized, the 
grains of the different species enter the system 
along different lines of vibrations and give rise 
to different responses of the digestive func- 
tions. This means a confusion of the entire 
assimilative and nutritional process, involving 
the integrity of every single cell of the system 
in the effort of the latter to accommodate for 
the different key-notes of vibration. 

Hence if the oat, with its peculiar magnetic 
verility, is chemically and physiologically 
combined with the constitutionally antagonis- 
tic elements contained in the congestive 
wheat, combustive corn or sedative rye, the 
ensuing neutralization of the different, oppos- 
ing elements will naturally give rise to dis- 
turbances in the systemic nutrition in its ef- 
fort to specialize the secretions of the diges- 
tive ferments, required to meet the heterog- 
enous demands of the incompatible grain mix- 
tures. 

16 



Each different grain is a biologic sym- 
phony, containing in harmonic completeness 
the elements representative of certain physio- 
logical powers. Hence the mixture of diifer- 
ent species of cereals will produce the same 
disturbance in the digestion and nutrition of 
the human body as the simultaneous perform- 
ance of an oration with its slow, measured 
rhythm, and a sonata with its quick, flowing 
rhythm and soft, melting accords. Applied to 
the processes of nutrition such discords, in the 
elemental fitness of foodstuffs, result in imper- 
fect nutrition and failing health. 

From this it is readily seen why the differ- 
ent bread-combinations of cornmeal, graham, 
rye, oats, flaxseed, etc., so far from being of 
any benefit to the system, become embarras- 
sing obstructions in the rhythmic order of its 
functional exchanges. One kind of grain at a 
time, whether separate or in combinations, is 
the only safe and sane diet. Simplicity is ever 
the supreme factor and gauge of evolution; 
and to fall in line with its purpose — simplicity 
and unity — is to be borne, with unfailing sur- 
ety, on the sweep of rhythmic power toward 
health, un-aging youth and tireless usefulness. 



17 



CHAPTER IV. 



WHAT FOOD TO BE COOKED, AND WHAT 

NOT TO BE COOKED. TO INSURE 

THE BEST ASSIMILATION 

AND NUTRITION 



While in most cases cooking means a devi- 
talization of the nutritional elements of the 
food, and may even seriously impair their di- 
gestibility, yet the devotees of raw or "un- 
fired" diet should not ignore the other fact, 
that in case of functional weakness, an indi- 
vidual, to restore his enfeebled digestion, may 
need the very change of physiological chemis- 
try which the cooking of food brings about. 

In order to insure the greatest nutritional 
results, we must take into consideration not 
only the laws and characteristics inherent in 
the foodstuff itself, but likewise the constitu- 
tional efficacy of the digestive powers of the 
individual. The motive back of diet should 
not consist in a mere catering to a person's 
taste and cravings, but rather in an effort to 
raise his digestive and assimilative powers to 
stages of highest efficiency, taking into ac- 
coimt both the nature of the food itself and 

18 



the physiological reaction involved in the di- 
gestive process. 

There are reasons for believing that to the 
majority of mankind the digestibility of cer- 
tain foodstuffs are improved by cooking. To 
this class of foods belong starch. Exposed to 
a certain excess of heat, the cellulose, envelop- 
ing the starch-cells, swells and bursts open, 
rendering its contents accessible to the ptyalin 
ferment of the salivary and intestinal secre- 
tions. From this it follows that as an article 
of diet, any foodstuff highly charged with 
starch is improved by cooking. Thus rice, with 
its 85 per cent; rye, 71 per cent; wheat, 70 per 
cent; oats 67 per cent, and most of the grains 
and pulses, which are highly charged with 
starch, derive their available nutritional value 
from an excessive exposure to heat. 

On the other hand, such foodstuffs as are 
rich in albuminous elements require an alto- 
gether different treatment, and may even be 
rendered detrimental through cooking, as the 
very heat which opens the starch-cell to induce 
the action of the digestive ferments, is found 
to close the albuminous cell, through the pro- 
cess of coagulation, — a condition by which the 
food becomes utterly impervious to the action 
of digestion. Hence the advisability of serv- 
ing such highly albuminous substances as 
eggs, milk, and most of the leaf vegetables — • 
especially celery — in their raw, unprepared 
state. 

19 



CHAPTER V. 



THE PROCESS OF DIGESTION— AN 
ELECTRIC PHENOMENON 



The conclusion to which the more advanced 
students of modern physiology have arrived, 
seems to point to digestion as an electric pro- 
cess. Thus Prof. Jaques Loebe, of the John 
Rockefeller University, Chicago, has recently 
published statements, based on painstaking 
laboratory experiments, referring to the pro- 
cesses of osmosis, in the animal and vegetable 
metabolism, as phases of electrolysis. 

It has thus been found that digestion is an 
electric process in which the positive energy 
of the ingested vegetable cell is polarized into 
animal tissue when brought in touch with the 
negatively charged cells of the body. The 
foodstuffs are mere carriers or electrodes for 
the transfer of vital-magnetic energies, similar 
to the process that goes on between the oxy- 
genated (positive-polarized) red blood corpus- 
cles in the arterial circulation, and the carJbon- 
ized (negative-polarized) muscle-tissue. The 
neutralization of the elemental affinity exist- 
ing between the oxygenated "ion" of the at- 
mospheric air, and the carbonized ''ion" of the 

20 



animal tissues, constitutes the process by 
which the living organism is relieved from its 
effete, decomposed waste material. 

Hence, digestion, to be at all scientifically 
understood, must be studied in the light of the 
electric phenomenon of polar-affinity with its 
triple progression of attraction, satisfaction, 
repulsion. If the digestion and assimilation of 
food were to be regarded as simple phases in 
the determinable progression of physiological 
chemistry, and solely depending on the sys- 
temic circulation for its absorption and trans- 
position into the various phases of organic and 
functional energy, the general strength and 
vigor experienced immediately after eating 
would not be scientifically possible. For the 
food enjoyed today is not absorbed, assimil- 
ated, oxygenated and rendered available as 
nervous energy before the day following. On 
the other hand, if digestion is an electric pro- 
cess, the first contact between the positive pol- 
arized food elements and the negative polar- 
ized gastric cells, would give the signal for a 
discharge of innumerable, invisible, magnetic 
batteries, diffusing lightning-waves of liber- 
ated, vital energy to every physiological cen- 
ter of the body. 

Digestion being an electric process, hunger 
stands for the phenomenon of unsatisfied af- 
finity, arising in the gastric and somatic cells 
for elements needed by the system. In other 
words, hunger is the electric tension arising 

21 



from the affinity which an exhausted cell ex- 
periences towards a replenishment of its con- 
stitutional needs. And this hunger, ^of course, 
takes the character of specialized appetite for 
those very elements of foods, from which the 
system suffers exhausture. 

In the preparation of our food, this play of 
electric polarity at work in the process of di- 
gestion becomes extremely significant. The 
plant, exposed to the sun, in the course of its 
growth, becomes charged with the warmth, 
light and energy of the great life-giver, while 
at the same time its roots absorb the potential- 
ities of the earth in the form of its indispensa- 
ble vegetable salts. 

Now if digestion is a play of electric polar- 
ities between the vegetable cell of the food, 
and the cell of human nutrition, it follows that 
the freedom of the cellular affinities, and com- 
plentness of their interchange, depend on the 
normal condition of the involved elemental 
agencies. Hence any interference with the 
natural groupings and valencies of the mole- 
cules, either in the cells of the body or the cells 
of the vegetable substances, retards or even 
arrests the normal progression of the chain of 
electric-vital explosions which we appreciate 
in terms of digestion and assimilation. 

From a standpoint of nutrition the process 
of cookery must therefore exert a devitalizing 
influence over the food, as nothing has such 
power to change the constitutional arrange- 

22 



ment of the molecules in organic substances as 
a high degree of heat. In cookery, the vital 
force and quality of the foodstuff is toned 
down to lower and lower levels of depolariza- 
tions, which means that the cells of the human 
metabolism, in order to absorb the food, must 
be toned down to a corresponding low degree 
of polarity. 

And it is here we find an explanation of the 
more or less marked digestive disturbance oc- 
curring when raw and cooked food are con- 
sumed at the same time. For as digestion de- 
pends on a synchronism in the ratio of vibra- 
tion between the cells of nutrition and the 
cells of the ingested material, it follows that 
the presence in the stomach simultaneously of 
raw and cooked foodstuffs causes a continuous 
interruption of the electro-vital exchanges, 
which inevitably must lead to confusions in 
the gastric secretions, delay of digestion, and 
a gradual tendency to decomposition of the 
gastric contents with subsequent dyspepsia 
and systemic malnutrition. 

Physiologically considered, the only legit- 
imate plea for the cooking of food would thus 
be found in an abnormal condition of the stom- 
ach, with its digestive secretions too feeble to 
deal successfully with the highly potentialized 
elements of the cell-structure of raw food. To 
secure digestive response in such a stomach 
means to institute a devitalization of the food- 
stuff — the reduction of the potency of the lat- 

23 



ter to levels on par with the vital resources 
of the digestion itself. 

Hence, cooking stands for a means of vital 
expediency — a curative process, by which a 
deranged and diseased stomach may regain its 
power of normal digestion. As a rule for prac- 
tical cookery, however, it is always safe to 
limit cooking to the more starchy vegetables, 
such as potatoes, cauliflower, beans, peas, 
pumpkins, etc. — in a word, the tubers and le- 
gumes — and always permit the leafy and al- 
buminous vegetables, as lettuce, celery, young 
green onions, tomatoes, to remain raw. And 
with regard to fruit, only in the case of devi- 
talized digestion, or in places where fresh fruit 
is inaccessible, should cooking and preserva- 
tion at all be instituted. 



24 



CHAPTER VI. 



MIXTURE OF FRUIT AND VEGETABLES- 
ITS EFFECT ON DIGESTION 



What we term the ''kingdoms of nature" 
are divided and subdivided into territories, 
each one representing laws and principles of 
internal regulation, all its own. Thus from 
the standpoint of alimentation, there is as 
wide a hiatus between the fruit and vegetable 
as between the vegetable and the mineral. The 
acid of the fruit, and the starch of the vegeta- 
ble, call forth fundamentally different reac- 
tions in the digestive secretions. The presence 
of acid fruit in the mouth has been observed to 
stop the flow of the salivary secretions, which 
directly and indispensably are connected with 
the digestion of the starches. Shut off from 
the digestive action of the salivary glands, the 
starch in its still non-dextrinated state, is 
ushered down into the stomach where no pro- 
vision is made for its digestion, and conse- 
quently has to remain unacted upon, until at 
the close of the digestive labors in the stomach 
when the non-digested, bacteria-invaded, pu- 
trifying mass is permitted passage through 

25 



the pyloric sphincter into the duodenum and 
small intestine. 

A similar failure awaits the mixture of 
fruit with proteid-bearing foodstuffs, such as 
meats, bread and cereal dishes. For as the lat- 
ter have their main and appropriate digestion 
in the stomach, while the fruit has its field of 
digestion in the small intestine, the introduc- 
tion of fruit into the stomach, at the time the 
latter is engaged in the digestion of proteids, 
means a precipitation in the midst of digestive 
labors of an element intractable to the gastric 
secretions, and yet prevented from escape 
through the eventual closure of the irritated 
pyloric sphincter — the latter being the gastric 
gateway to the intestinal canal. The conse- 
quences, though susceptible to modification by 
a yet powerful digestion, always tend toward 
the same ultimate issue ; disrupture of the gas- 
tric labors, with a conversion of digestion and 
peptonization into processes of decomposition 
and fermentation. 

But even when taken alone, and unmixed 
with other foodstuffs, (fruit may at times be 
dangerous to certain constitutions. For as 
diet has its basis in constitutional affinities, 
the condition determining the safety or non- 
safety of a fruit-diet, lies in the predominance 
in an individual of electric or magnetic polar- 
ities, back of which will be found the deeper 
affinities at work in the mind. The character- 
istics attending electrically polarized people 

26 



are manifested in irritability, nervous tension, 
high-strung susceptibility, strenuousness, etc., 
in their general personal life. And as un- 
cooked fruit comes under the electric category, 
the electrically surcharged individual must be 
careful of its indulgence. The clinical features 
attending poisoning from fruit-acids manifest 
in vertigo, headache, muscular soreness in the 
back, neck and shoulders, which in acute cases 
may even rise to symptoms of neuritis and 
neuralgia. On the other hand, as vegetables, 
in their general constitution, and especially in 
their cooked form, are magnetic, and their po- 
larity consequently negative, they are more in 
line with dietetic needs of electrically polar- 
ized people. 

Fruit and vegetables, hydro-carbons and 
carbo-hydrates, stand to each other as two op- 
posing, yet complementary, divisions of 
equally valuable, equally indispensable forms 
of food. The former predominates in acids and 
sugars, the latter in starches; the former are 
centers of polarizations for the positive aspect 
of evolutionary forces, the latter for negative 
forces ; the former are electric in their relation 
to life and growth — the latter are magnetic. 

Hence the fruit and vegetable are sepa- 
rated by an entire cycle of evolutionary un- 
foldment, with no direct physiological or bio- 
logical chain of connection. The fruit is born, 
nourished and matured in the air, bathed in 
the electric currents of sunlight and oxygen — 

27 



a center of nutritional life, brought into form 
and substance through the action and reaction 
of molecular movements. It is the incarnation 
of a fairy carnival of sunbeams and electric 
''ions," caught on the wing and fixed into 
spheroid moulds of energy through the crystal- 
izing influence of the minerals of the earth, 
transmitted along the cambium layers of the 
root, trunk and branches. 

It is through these channels that the fruit 
receives its supporting framework and pro- 
tective covering. Welling up from within, 
from the central fountain of life, a ceaseless 
stream of electric potencies are thus constant- 
ly crystalizing into form and substance, and 
directed by the mystic agencies of the blossom, 
bud and fruit. 

But if the fruit is an electric zone of vital 
polarization, organized into units of concrete 
substance, the vegetable holds a position the 
very opposite. For while the fruit through its 
full-orbed form expresses a completeness of 
structure, subtlety of poise and high-ten- 
sioned, trigger-balanced organization, ever 
ready to break up its molecular combination 
under the pressure of disturbing environ- 
ments — so on the other hand, the vegetable, by 
the very angularity and elongation of form, 
indicates the basis of its composition, and sub- 
sequent steadiness and endurance over against 
adverse environments. Its tendency is molec- 
ular-ward — toward preservation and fixity of 

28 



substance and structure. Again as fruit to its 
character is oxy-hydrogenous, and predomi- 
nantly acidic in quality, so the vegetable is 
carbon-nitrogenous, with fats, starches and 
salts as its constitutional output. Or lastly, 
fruit, from its very nature and position is elec- 
tric, while the vegetable is magnetic. 

From this it follows that there are numer- 
ous and positive conditions that make a mix- 
ture of fruit and vegetables inadvisable at the 
same meal for those who eat to live and are 
desirous of a healthy, useful life. Owing to its 
electric quality the fruit is rapidly disorgan- 
ized, and shows tendency to decomposition in 
consequence of the slightest bruise or injury 
to its surface ; while a vegetable can for a long 
time resist the dissolving influence of hostile 
environments. This fundamental dissimilarity 
in their constitutional equipment, results in 
quite a different power of reaction to the gas- 
tric and intestinal secretions and causes a vast 
difference in the time required for their respec- 
tive digestion. Hence the average fruit re- 
quires only one hour, or one hour and twenty 
minutes for digestion, the cooked vegetable re- 
quires from two to three hours, which means 
that to the extent they are ingested simul- 
taneously, they are intercepting the normal 
cycle of their digestion. Suspended in the 
stomach or intestine in a temperature of 97° 
farh., the fruit with its sensitive nature, will 
complete its digestive cycle before the vegeta- 

29 



ble is half through, which again must give rise 
to a series of disorderly processes to break in 
and interrupt the normal chain of digestive 
progression. The rapid disintegration of the 
fruit renders its lapse into fermentation inev- 
itable, followed bj^ the infection of the entire 
gastric contents. Sour stomach, belching of 
gas, virtigo, etc., testify to the collapse of di- 
gestion into fermentation, and nutrition into 
auto-intoxication. 

These grave changes in many cases, how- 
ever, may proceed without giving rise to any 
annoyance, or even knowledge, of the individ- 
ual, as to the subversion of his digestive labors. 
According to his immediate sensation the food 
agrees with him. The constitutional power of 
his nature, and the vital reserve force — ever at 
his disposal — gives him a temporary supply 
of life, that for a longer or shorter period of 
time enables the defence work of his system to 
triumph over the difficulty, and neutralizes the 
destructive changes, or to postpone their man- 
ifestation until a systemic breakdown or pre- 
mature old age foreshortens his life cycle. 
Premature breakdown, feeble old age at sixty, 
tumors, cancers, diseases at the time of the cli- 
macteric, etc., are due to a reckless and wanton 
wastefulness of our vital forces in the struggle 
to defy and subdue the enemies of our own 
household, introduced into our life by our own 
careless and gluttonous living. 



30 



CHAPTER VII. 



SOUPS 



It is indeed tragi-comical that the three 
elements considered as the most important 
features of a dinner — the soup, the gravy and 
the pastry — are exactly those which are not 
only without nutritional value to the system, 
but— in tragic seriousness — have done as 
much towards the breakdown of man's func- 
tional powers and structural integrity, as 
whisky and beer. Only in the latter case, how- 
ever, the destruction is more acute and spec- 
tacular, and involves, in addition to self-de- 
struction, the moral and social fates of other 
lives. 

In its very nature the soup is an extract, 
and as such contains the disorganized frag- 
ments of ruptured foodstuffs. Being an ex- 
tract of meat, the soup contains only those ele- 
ments which are subject to solution, viz: uric 
acid, fatty acids, nitrates and ammonia — ele- 
ments that have their main value in the stimu- 
lating, hence toxic, effect they exert upon the 
involved tissues. 

All stimulation, if not derived from food and 
actual nourishment, is toxic. And as soup, as 

31 



generally served in restaurants and public eat- 
ing-houses, on scientific analysis, yields hardly 
two per cent albuminous or muscle-producing 
substance, it follows that the systemic stimu- 
lation accredited to soup, comes from its toxic, 
not from its nutritional character. Having 
recognized the presence of poison in the sys- 
tem, nature makes a grand charge to effect its 
removal — a charge, which by virtue of the 
very rush of life it involves: the constitutional 
stirring up and liberation of vital energy to 
execute a neutralization, isolation and elimina- 
tion of the poisons from the system — must 
give rise to a sudden though short-circuited 
sensation of power. The generation of this 
power, however, and the associate secretion of 
''defensive fluids,^' by which nature wields a 
remedy to protect the individual from his own 
poisonous output, is furnished at great cost 
through the internal secretions of the central 
nervous and ductless glandular system. These 
secretions, called out and necessitated by a 
purely wanton indulgence, constitute a posi- 
tive leakage of life, and not being demanded 
by any aspect of individual constructive use- 
fulness, receives no sanction or recompensa- 
tion by nature in terms of spontaneous, vital 
reaction. The entire process simply stands for 
a reckless dissipation of high-tensioned, vital 
force-currents, the original purpose of which 
is to serve as nervous reserve deposits for 
emergencies, that may arise from the advance 

32 



of years, when the physiologic exchanges of 
the system have lost their native power of re- 
siliency. 

In the daily routine of his life, the individ- 
ual actuates in living reality the idea, por- 
trayed in Honore de Balzac's weird but pro- 
found philosophical novel, "The Magic Skin." 
Suspended on the wall over the bed of its fated 
owner, the size of this skin shrunk in propor- 
tion to the extent the latter indulged in acts 
of excess and dissipation. As the hand of a 
time-piece follows the passing moments of 
time, so the shrinking of the skin followed 
with relentless precision the moral vicissi- 
tudes of this man's career; — the swifter the 
currents of his pleasures, the more appalling 
the shrinking of the skin; while on the other 
hand, restraint and self-posession would 
bring this inescapable mystic accountant to 
an immovable repose. But as the moments of 
self-restraint were few, and the moments of 
self-indulgence many, the tragic end was not 
slow in approaching. During a wild journey 
with the gilded youth of the country, when in 
his efforts to forget his fate, he plunged deep 
into nocturnal orgies, the distracted young 
man one morning was found dead in his room. 
That very moment the magic skin had shrunk 
into its last perceptible size — it had disap- 
peared. 

Every individual has at his disposal a cer- 
tain number of heartbeats, to be distributed in 

33 



rhythmic order over the entire field of his life, 
and depending on his own decision whether to 
be used up in breadth or in length. Hence 
any indulgence, which may unduly hasten the 
cyclic momentum of the heart, foreshortens to 
that extent the entire cycle of the inmividual. 
The quiet liver — the individual, who avoids 
excitement and stimulating indulgences in his 
daily routine — the country parson or country 
school teacher of old — will live long and full, 
and retain his vigor and usefulness to the un- 
abridged physiological end of his healthful, 
useful and peaceful existence. 

Stimulation, however, is only one of the 
objectionable features of the soup. Prepared 
in most cases from a stock of meat, its entire 
contents are enveloped or encapsulated in a 
cover of grease. As its field of digestion, how- 
ever, is not in the stomach, the presence of 
the greasy compound in the latter, constitutes 
a decided menace to its digestion, defjdng ev- 
ery effort of the gastric juices to reduce it 
condition, the grease adheres to the walls of 
condition, the gr e ase adhcroo to th e walls ef 
the stomach, and thus by sealing up the secre- 
tive glands prevents, or at least largely inter- 
feres with, the digestion of other foodstuffs. 
Hence the same principle that renders fried 
foodstuffs indigestible is also applicable to 
the fat soup, in which the proteid and starch 
molecule, encapsulated by the grease, is iso- 
lated from the action of the gastric juices. It 

34 



is only after the soup has found its way out 
of the stomach into the intestinal canal, that 
the fat, under the action of the secretion of the 
liver and pancreas, is dissolved, and the pro- 
teid molecule at last set free. But as the in- 
testine is not the field for the proteid diges- 
tion, and the gastric secretions are no longer 
available, it is readily seen, that the loss to 
the system does not only consist in the weak- 
ening influence of the protracted, though fu- 
tile, effort of the gastric chemistry to digest 
the grease, but also in the ultimate waste of 
the food itself. 

But the indictment of the soup does not 
stop even here. We have found it to be a 
poisonous extract, and an indigestible fat — 
yet there is a third objection to its use: being 
a fluid it weakens the gastric secretions. For 
the gastric juice possesses by its very nature 
the normal and adequate admixture of Hydro- 
chloric acid and Pepsin, and any additional 
dilution in the form of soup or beverage in 
general, weakens to that extent its power of 
cutting and emulsifying the ingested proteids. 
Except in cases where the Hydro-chloric acid 
is too strong — which, however, must first be 
analytically ascertained — any drinking or in- 
gestion of fluids at meals, decreases the per- 
centage of digestive capacity, and induces 
waste, both of labor and material. The animal 
soup, used at the beginning of a meal as an 

35 



appetizer, is irredeemably bad and should be 
left out of every sensible bill of fare. 

There is a type of soup, however, which is 
admissible in a sanitary system of diet: the 
vegetable puree — the strained decoction of a 
few thoroughly boiled vegetables, such as on- 
ions ,carrots, parsley, peas, thymes, with a 
stock of rice or pearl barley. Such a soup, 
enjoyed with a couple of whole- wheat zwei- 
bach, would constitute a meal in itself, as its 
great percentage of solids would stimulate 
salivary secretion and comply with all the re- 
quirements of an ordinary meal. 



36 



CHAPTER Vin. 



GRAVIES 



Compared with the ravages that digestion 
is subjected to by the use of the brown gravy, 
most soups are quite innocent. Every detri- 
mental feature of the soup is present in the 
grayy — only in accentuated degree. To the 
extent the gravy is rich, it is indigestible. 
Starches, carbons, proteids and fats are all 
present in the gravy, and by the inevitable 
browning or frying process, are thoroughly 
encapsulated and rendered impervious to the 
gastric secretions, involving inestimable losses 
of labor and waste throughout all the fields of 
salivary, gastric and intestinal digestion and 
assimilation. 

In the preparataion of gravy an alkaloid 
substance is formed, due to the exposure of 
the mass to the scorching heat of the 
frying-pan. The brown color thus imparted 
to the mixture is the produce of a most dan- 
gerous alkaloidal substance, containing a 
chemical compound of fatty acid and carbon 
which is not only indigestible, but acts on the 
trophic cell-structure with the virility of a 
toxin. Especially is this carbonized fatty acid 

37 



destructve of the epithelial linings of the 
glomerules and tubings of the kidneys. 

In the majority of cases, however, the 
blame for this breakdown is not laid at the 
door of the gravy, but of the meat. Meat, like 
charity, is made to cover a multitude of sins. 
Often under the influence of vegetarianism, 
meat is dropped, while the gravy is retained 
— a procedure which is not only a blunder, but 
a serious violation of physiological laws. It is 
the soup and the gravy that renders the meat 
dinner harmful, not the meat itself. The lat- 
ter, if enjoyed in moderataion, two or three 
times a week, or in accordance with individual 
needs, has often in cases of systemic nervous- 
ness and catarrh, proved to be a great remedial 
agent. But to derive the full benefit of the 
meat, its usual and time-honored combination 
with bread should be substituted by spinach 
or boiled onions. Any additional mixture in 
the form of dessert, creams, nuts, sweets, etc., 
means the perversion of the entire meal into 
forms of decomposition and malnutrition. 



38 



CHAPTER IX. 



PASTRY 



This brings us to the third ingredient in 
our group of stomach destroyers — the pastry. 
So perverted has the jaded sense of taste be- 
come in the course of a misdirected diet, that 
a dinner not accompanied and rounded out by 
some kind of dessert is regarded as an utter 
epicurean failure. The reputation of a restau- 
rant is often sustained more by virtue of its 
success in pastry, than in meats, bread and 
vegetables. Yet it is through the latter that 
the system receives its supply of muscle, heat 
and energy — not through the pastry, which 
has no other purpose or power than to serve 
as a stimulant of the gustatory glands and 
taste-buds, and to coerce the fagging functions 
of salivation and digestion into a last supreme 
effort to respond to a new charge. 

Sifted down to its primary elements, sugar, 
grease, egg, starch and butter, with the addi- 
tional, complimentary flavors of arsenic — or 
anilin-dyed extracts — the pastry holds the dis- 
tinction of having brought into a grand food- 
perverting climax every ingredient that may 
give rise to gastric and intestinal disaster. 

39 



For in this classic mixture — sugar, grease, 
butter, eggs and starch — the art, or rather 
black art, of cookery has achieved its most in- 
glorious success as a wrecker of human diges- 
tion. The taste of this mixture would un- 
doubtedly in itself be repulsive to the dis- 
criminating power of a natural sensation 
were it not for the tragic fact that the con- 
stant maltreatment of the taste-buds has 
dulled heir native sensitiveness to the value 
of natural flavors. The clean, wholesome, re- 
freshing flavors of the grain, fruit and vege- 
table, have no longer any power to rouse the 
overstimulated and perverted taste glands. 
Through a long exposure to concentrated and 
un-natural flavors the function of taste has 
developed into a new and altogether patholog- 
ica sensation— a sensation unreliable as guide, 
irresponsive to nature, and fatal to life. 

Whenever a mixture of sugar, grease and 
starch is exposed to heat in the form of frying 
or baking — necessary for the production of 
the brown, greasy crust which forms the outer 
covering or skeleton framework for the pies 
and puddings of professional cookery — a dan- 
gerous alkaloid is generated, which, in con- 
nection with the inevitable fatty acids, arising 
from the mixture, proceeds to form inpene- 
trable deposits in the mucous mucosa of the in- 
testines and of the dialyzing membrane in the 
tissues of absorption, thus preventing the vas- 
cular drainage and nutritional exchanges be- 

40 



tween the blood-stream and the lymph-spaces 
—followed by the unavoidable consequence 
of membranous catarrh and of congestion m 
the various absorbent tissues. 

Particularly inimical is this alkaloid sub- 
stance to the epithelial covering of the glom- 
erules of the kidneys, and constitutes one of 
the prominent causes leading up to Bright 's 
Disease. The dead-lock to the proteid mole- 
cule, rendering it intractable to the gastric 
secretion by its incapsulation in the grease, 
throws a severe burden on the liver and pan- 
creas—the two glands on which devolves the 
task of bursting open the fat-capsule. The 
whole constitution suffers from the worthless 
indulgence, by which is caused an expense of 
general vitality to the system, far out-balanc- 
ing the revenues derived from the digestion of 
the foodstuffs themselves. In the great ma- 
jority of fashionable food preparations the 
major process of nutrition is a positive failure. 
We starve from innutrition in the midst of 
plenty. In place of bringing health and 
strength to the eater, such indulgences inject 
into the very cell-life of his system the death- 
poison of decomposition. It is in spite of such 
food that we exist— not because of it. 

It is incredible to what extent the average 
individual disregards his health in relation to 
the food he permits to be passed into his stom- 
ach. The same man who with the greatest 
care selects the food for a canine prize-winner, 

41 



eats a bowl of restaurant soup, a fish-ball, a 
goulasch and a piece of pie or pudding, etc., 
without giving a moment's thought to the 
character or knowledge of the cook who pre- 
pared the mixture. The cook may be an ignor- 
ant, cigaret-smoking, beer-drinking, unclean 
individual, who has no more knowledge of the 
nature and needs of digestion and nutrition, of 
antagonisms of food-mixture and their chem- 
ical affinities to gastric secretions, etc., than a 
teamster has of the engineering of a trans- 
atlantic liner. Though in charge of such a 
tremendously important life-and-death in- 
volving office, as that of supplying our body 
with the nutritional elements on which we de- 
pend for our usefulness and social success, 
the cook knows of only two principles in rela- 
tion to his food : stimulation of taste and temp- 
tation of appearance. To accomplish these 
two ends his boldness and unscrupulousness 
with regard to the laws of nature and the 
demands of health know of no bounds. The 
natural flavors of the grain, the fruit and the 
vegetable, so full of meaning and purpose, 
both to the moral and physical life of man, 
are ruthlessly masked to suit the overstimu- 
lated and perverted taste of the cook himself, 
and his conception of the taste of his patrons. 

The work of seasoning the food for the 
purpose of stimulating the appetite of the 
eater, is not only wanton but dangerous. 
There is a definite relation between the needs 

42 



of the human system, on the one hand, and 
the sense of taste and appetite on the other. 
The natural, gentle taste of the foodstuffs is 
stimulating to the appetite only to the extent 
these foodstuffs fill the actual needs of perfect 
physiological life and usefulness. To increase 
this stimulation by the artificial pungency of 
seasoning, creates a demand, in excess of ac- 
tual need, and causes accumulation of waste 
matter in the system, with all the conse- 
quences of functional decomposition and de- 
generacy. 

The penal codes in the domain of nature 
may not always find their execution in the im- 
mediate punishment of the transgressor. Of- 
ten there may be a long interval between cause 
and effect ; between the violation of a law and 
its eventual recoil. Hence we often hear peo- 
ple, addictd to gluttony, boast of thir powers 
of digestion, defying with seeming impunity, 
every rule and principle of diet. These peo- 
ple, however, are shortsighted. They have 
subverted, not converted, nature to their diet- 
etic outrages. Hence their escapes are only 
temporary. The race of life does not com- 
mence before the age of sixty. At this age 
man feels his great change of life — his climac- 
tory — when suspended in the balance of life, 
his vital records are thrown into the scales 
with him. It will then be seen whether in the 
financing of his vital business of health and 
strength, he has laid up sufficient funds to 

43 



carry him through his critical period and lift 
him into the safety and triumph of graceful 
old age, and young feelings, or land him in the 
disgraceful delinquency of premature decline 
and dissolution. 



44 



CHAPTER X. 



MEAT AS A FACTOR IN DIET 



Meat as a factor in diet has its value or 
non-value in the condition and quantity in 
which it is consumed. It may be used as medi- 
cine, as stimulant and as food. Used in mod- 
eration, and without the usual disturbing ad- 
mixtures, meat may even be a remedy for the 
very ailment which its excess or wrong com- 
bination has caused. Hence while an immod- 
erate consumption of heat, or meat taken in 
connection with fat gravies, milk, pastry or 
fruit, by generating a series of toxic acids, 
such as carbonic, uric and oxy-acids, etc., will 
give rise to rheumatism; so on the other hand 
a moderate use of meat, rightly combined, or 
not combined at all, may succeed in neutraliz- 
ing the effect of those very poisons men- 
tioned, and thus affect a cure for rheumatism. 
What meat will do when enjoyed under true 
health conditions, is manifested in the bound- 
less virility, agility and power of the lion and 
tiger; while on the other hand in the diseased, 
fermenting, rheumatic bundle of beast-hood so 
often represented by man, we have the ef- 
fect of meat, when indulged promiscously, and 

45 



in excess. For both aspects have in the human 
being a perfect representation: according to 
his understanding and self-control, he may 
convert meat, either into a valuable nourish- 
ment or into a source of poison. 

As to the relation of the future man to the 
consumption of meat, we have every reason 
for the belief that as soon as the individual 
succeeds in growing harmonious to life and 
nature in other aspects, he will also grow har- 
monious and poised in regard to the consump- 
tion of meat. The pure, balanced, refined and 
healthy mind, other things being equal, will 
soon arrive at a state of bodily evolution when 
meat will no longer serve as a source or con- 
dition for health and power. The future of the 
earth undoubtedly belongs to the vegetarians. 

On the other hand, there is no scientific 
value in the argument, so frequently used by 
our vegetarians, that because the monkey is a 
vegetarian — subsisting on nuts and fruits only 
— man, in his turn, as a supposed descendant 
of the monkey, must have his historical and 
biological basis in a vegetarian mode of living. 
The theory of a human origin in the pithicoid 
ape, however, is no longer taken seriously by 
advanced scientists. Ernest Heackel as long 
as eight years ago, disproved the theory on a 
purely geological and paleontalogical basis. 
So far from man being a descendant of the 
monkey, it is the latter that has continued and 
continues to descend from a degenerate 

46 



branch of prehistoric man. Hence in place of 
the monkey setting an example for man in 
the system of diet, he merely demonstrates the 
correspondence between his individual needs, 
and the world ^s evolutionary development. 

Historically and biologically considered, 
man springs from a carnivorous basis, work- 
ing his way upwards, along lines of physical, 
mental and moral refinement, towards a state 
of existence, more or less remote, when meat 
shall no longer be needed as a condition or ex- 
pediency for the attainment of health, strength 
and usefulness. 

Generalizations, however, with regard to 
meat as a factor of construction or destruc- 
tion in human evolution, are meaningless and 
useless. Races have been meat-eaters or vege- 
tarians not in consequence of their biological 
or anthropological position, but in accordance 
with their physical, mental, moral and spirit- 
ual needs. The same evolutionary principle 
which demanded a meat-free diet for the men- 
tal needs, represented in the metaphysical ab- 
stractions of the Hindoo system of thought 
and living — and later demanded the beginning 
of a meat-diet with their fruits and vegetables, 
to sustain the more concretely poised and in- 
tellectually organized minds of the Greeks — 
manifested in an increasing need of meat to 
comply with the grosser, not only secular, but 
sensual development of the Roman mind and 
morals — a dietetic departure, which lastly in 

47 



tlie adventurous, materially and sensuously 
permeated life of the early Saxon, created a 
necessity for the grossest form of meat indul- 
gence. 

But out of this gross, animal-saturated 
mentality, with its corresponding brutish form 
of living, we are making progress into a new 
zone of consciousness, borne by a conception 
of higher moral and spiritual motives — the 
realizataion of which calls for a purer form of 
food. Hence our present interest in matters 
of diet with its manifest tendency towards 
elemental purity and refinement of food, has 
its basis and force in the general elevation of 
our civic and religious ideals, and the subse- 
quent rise in the scale of our physical evolu- 
tion. 

This brings us to the practical aspect of 
meat as a factor in diet. For if it is admitted 
that the necessities for a certain system of 
food-element are due, directly or indirectly, 
to the position, disposition and indisposition 
of each individual, it follows that the character 
of his mind should be recognized as a very 
important factor in the selection of his diet. 
Hence to the extent a person possesses the 
mental refinement, moral poise and spiritual 
power of the ancient Greeks, his nature will be 
able to respond to the dietetic restrictions of 
those high-minded, frugal people; while if his 
constitution is animated by the uncouth force 
of the later Romans and the early Saxons, and 

48 



his ideals correspondingly gross, his dietetic 
reforms, to be safe and permanent, must be 
modified in accordance with these conditions. 

Just as in the larger processes of life, evo- 
lution, to sustain its vital processes, must pro- 
ceed without shock, so in matters of food, the 
individual should inaugerate his dietetic 
changes gradually, well informed and well 
prepared. His change of diet, to be perman- 
ent, must be preceded by a change of mind — 
as a vegetarian diet has very little value to the 
body as long as the mind is still reveling in 
carnivorous desires. Realizing, however, that 
meat, by its very state of being charged with 
animal magnetism, affects a modifying in- 
fluence on an over-strung and too highly ten- 
sioned nervous system — it is readily seen why 
meat can be beneficial to one person and the 
very opposite to another. The stolid, submis- 
sive element, characteristic to the meat, with 
its constitutional tendency to subdue the men- 
tal strain of the super-nervous — if applied to 
the self-possessed, slow-moving and self-suf- 
ficient individual — will manifest as a dead 
weight, smothering into inertia his mental and 
moral activities. 

By extending this argument to its logical 
limits we shall find three classes of eaters, 
which each in his line, holds claim to our un- 
biased consideration: those who are absorbed 
in the purely vegetative interests of an instinc- 
tive, uncultured nature-life — the coolies of all 

49 



times and ages; — those who have reached a 
stage of abstract development in the course of 
a moral and spiritual evolution, when their 
system has passed out of the needs and neces- 
sities of meat ; — and those who are engaged in 
the great intermediary zone of existence, ser- 
iously aspiring to the abstract heights of ideal 
perfection, yet wrestling with the problems of 
an unredeemed but not unredeemable animal- 
human nature. 

Thus adjusting himself to the needs of his 
nature — indulging or not indulging in meat as 
the exigencies of his environments and tem- 
perament may determine, while unceasingly 
aiming at health and usefulness as the guid- 
ing and impelling motives for his diet, the 
individual will safely and unfailingly advance 
toward the ideal of perfection, and sooner or 
later find the attitude, conducive to his safest 
and truest evolution. This may exclude or in- 
clude meat as a factory in diet — not by chance 
or guesswork, but by a rigid, scientific obser- 
vation with regard to subjective and objective 
facts as determining elements in the needs of 
human nature. 



50 



CHAPTER XI. 



SUGAR— A FRIEND OR FOE TO HUMAN 
LIFE? 



Sugar has a deeper bearing on human diet- 
etics than most people realize. It holds the 
position of the traditional two-edged sword of 
Eden, suspended over the gateway to the field 
of moral evolution. It constitutes the acid 
test of human self-control — an ever-present 
tempter to laxity of moral fibre in forms of 
self-indulgence. 

The very presence in commerce of ex- 
tracted sugar demonstrates at once that a vio- 
lation of the laws of nature has taken place, 
and that a dietetic non-descript has been let 
loose in the world. Being an article of isola- 
tion and reduction, the very production of su- 
gar means that nature has been compelled to 
surrender her balance of power and dignity 
of purpose, to serve the interests of an over- 
stimulated, overfed organism. 

The relation of the creature to the Creator, 
and of man to nature, is expressed in harmony, 
co-operation and reciprocity. Every form of 
life and growth in nature has a definite, self- 
si 



explanatory meaning, and occupies well-de- 
fined zones of usefulness and necessity. The 
fruit, the grain, the vegetable are complete 
entities, well-balanced compounds, containing 
in the easiest digestible and assimilative form, 
the elements needed for the strongest expres- 
sion of a given type of life. In the evolution 
of nature a creative or constructive chemistry 
is at work, in which the needs of life are so 
minutely and intelligently recognized, that 
every detail in its composition refers to posi- 
tive needs and necessities of the various or- 
ganisms. 

From this it follows that a disturbance of 
the integrity of these harmonious compounds 
in the form of extraction, concentration, sep- 
aration, conglomeration, etc., by and through 
which the original character of the compound 
is lost, is a violation of physiological laws, 
that will result in a rupture between man and 
nature, and in the prevention of the former of 
getting the full benefit of the poised and meas- 
ured balance of elements held suspended as 
unit-power in the vegetable form. 

The loss to life and personality involved in 
this vital alienation, between man and nature, 
can never be adequately realized. For it is not 
only a loss of the elements removed in and by 
the process of extraction, but as a result of the 
latter, the evolution of alien, microscopic en- 
tities — organized ferments which, in the form 
of parasites, proceed to attack and devitalize 

52 



the organism in which they find a lodgement. 
The extract, which in a greater degree than 
any other, attacks and usurps the human or- 
ganism, is the extract of sugar. 

Sugar as an extract is a form of decomposi- 
tion brought into existence by means of a 
breaking up of the substance in which it was 
physiologically, biologically and constitution- 
ally contained. The valuable, life-sustaining 
properties of sodium, potassium, magnesium 
contained in the beet, the fruit and the sugar 
cane, are practically lost in the sugar; while 
the oxygen represented in the 44 per cent of 
water in the natural combination, is entirely 
lost in the extract. The following comparison 
between the natural and the artificial forms of 
sugar will readily show the dangerous char- 
acter of the latter when used in the prepara- 
tion of our food: 



Natural Sugar 


Artificial Sugar 




Per Cent. 


Per Cent. 


Potassium 


30.19 


28.79 


Sodium 


10.42 


2.89 


Calcium carb 


2.60 


10.93 


Magnasium 


4.71 


1.16 


Iron 


3.23 


1.68 


Sulphur 


4.85 


4.69 


Water 


44.10 


0.00 



The result of the conversion, or rather sub- 
version, of the natural sugar into artificial su- 
gar is readily surmised. The sugar, entering 
the system in the ruptured, devitalized condi- 

53 



tion, is trembling under the raging affinity, 
for the elements from which it has artificially 
been separated. And as these elements are 
present in the gastric secretions, it follows 
that the stomach will become the field of ac- 
tion for a most important chemical affinity by 
which the sugar will complete and replenish 
its own deficiencies at the expense of the di- 
gestive secretions. As the carbon in the sugar 
proceeds to extract the oxygen held in the gas- 
tric juice, the latter by the loss of this sustain- 
ing and balancing element, breaks down into 
decomposition with the subsequent evolution 
of carbonic acid gas, ammonia, oxy-bacterial 
acid, etc., — the output, of course, depending 
for its type and character on the nature of the 
food present in the stomach and involved in 
the decomposition. The destiny of the food 
after having entered the stomach has only two 
possibilities : digestion or decomposition. And 
whenever the normal consistency of the gas- 
tric juice has been interfered with, whenever 
the artificial sweets of extracts, mixed in the 
foods are chemically combining with the oxy- 
gen in the hydro-chloric acid of the stomach 
secretions, an orderly digestion is impossible. 
The gastric juice, failing to dissolve and pep- 
tonize the ingested foodstuffs, cannot prevent 
the fermentation and decomposition of the lat- 
ter or defend the digestic field from being 
swamped by the bacterial invasion following 
in the wake of the digestive breakdown. 

54 



"Free^' — i. e., extracted or concentrated — 
sugar, cannot be indulged in without incurring 
a penalty in the loss of strength and vitality 
to the system, though the harm may not be di- 
rectly noticeable. For diseases are cumula- 
tive, and grow under the false truce of silence 
and quietude. Physiological, like elemental 
storms, are generated under a clear firmament, 
and manifest first after every element is ad- 
justed and charged for the outbreak. Tem- 
porary escape — though it may serve as an ar- 
gument for the short-sighted, and an encour- 
agement for the weak — is a mere makeshift of 
systemic resistance, which to the very last ex- 
erts a native effort to survive, against over- 
powering odds of dietetic transgressions. 

Nor is the ever-present craving for sweets 
a sign for its legitimacy to be enjoyed, — 
though we may often hear the arguments that 
whatever the system craves, is normal and 
necessary for its sustenance. The craving for 
the extracted form of sugar, however, arises 
from the very fermentation which its presence 
in the stomach brings about. For the process 
of fermentation gives rise to the stimulation 
and flush of energy of the system coupled with 
the intoxication of the nerves through the gen- 
eration of alcohol, and the subsequent rush of 
nervous power caused by the sudden demands 
on the general system for assistance to subdue 
the gastric upheaval. This rush of vital energy 
from the central nervous system to the field 

55 



of digestion, gives the sensation of great phys- 
ical power, though in reality, the entire pro- 
cess spells profound exhaustion and loss to ev- 
ery cell or nerve center involved. 

Thus, normal strength is generated uncon- 
sciously and unnoticed in those undefiled lab- 
oratories of the vegetable life — the cells of nu- 
trition — and reaches self-consciousness and 
individual recognition only under the form of 
health, endurance and poise. Hence, any form 
of stimulation to the system is a vital expense, 
like a draft on a bank account, which in order 
to be safe, and physiologically legitimate, 
must be sustained by energy-bearing elements. 
Indeed the very strength we feel from a stim- 
ulant should warn us from its continuance, un- 
less the stimulation is derived from natural 
energy-producing sources, viz: food, air and 
water. 

Now as to sugar, its stimulating power and 
inherent seductiveness, has its genesis in the 
very devitalization and impoverishment of the 
substance itself. Being a mere extract, the 
sugar is to its real nature a disrupted, devital- 
ized substance, in which oxygen, as already 
seen, is almost entirely removed. Hence, its 
entrance into the human organism is that of a 
thing of prey and plunder — raging and hun- 
gering for the elements of which it has been 
robbed; and as oxygen is especially among the 
missing properties, its affinity for this ex- 
tremely important element is irresistible. In 

56 



other words, sugar absorbs oxygen in the gas- 
tric and intestinal secretions, as a sponge 
sucks up water — persuing it with the in- 
satiable drain of affinity throughout the entire 
field of oxygenation. Similar attacks are 
waged on the other elements of nutrition, such 
as potassium, sodium, etc., on which the sugar 
has suffered a loss, leading to the metabolic 
climax when digestion is perverted into fer- 
mentation, and assimilation into decomposi- 
tion. 

It is thus readily seen how the appetite or 
craving for extracted sweets found its control- 
ling influence over the taste. It drains with a 
resistless suction every cell of the system, for 
oxygen and other elements, which are de- 
manded by the digestion to replenish the losses 
suffered by the gastric and intestinal tissues 
and secretions through the ravages of fer- 
mentation and decomposition. Yet this is not 
all. If the sugar is consumed in connection 
with food, the inevitable fermentation of the 
latter gives rise to the evolution of alcohol and 
other toxins, the action of which takes effect 
on the nerves in the exhilaration of the senses 
known as intoxication — followed by the same 
vital exhausture and subsequent urge for re- 
newed stimulation. Hence candy-eating is 
practically a subjective and disguised form of 
alcoholic inebriety, which in some way or 
other, leads up to a similar ultimate collapse 
of physiological and mental power. 

57 



The stimulus thus imparted to the gastric 
enervations reacts in demands of the latter 
which are utterly false and unreliable. The 
rush of systemic energy, sweeping through the 
secretory cells, may induce a sense of hunger, 
even at the time when the stomach is over- 
charged with food. Hence the readiness of the 
stomach, even at the breaking point of surfeit, 
to accommodate for the long chain of dishes of 
which the conventional dinner is made up — 
an accommodation that spells future ruin to 
the entire system. 

In dietetic strictness, the relish of sugar is 
physiologically legitimate in one form only — 
the form which nature has rounded out and 
completed in harmonious fullness of taste, 
health and digestibility : the fruit. It is in this 
form that we can enjoy every prompting of 
taste and relish, without incurring the penalty 
of a reaction of suffering. But even here we 
are held under the limitation of inviolable con- 
ditions: fruit must be enjoyed perfectly ripe 
and uncombined with any other food. It is 
the aristocrat of diet and suffers no rivalry or 
partnership in its occupancy of the digestive 
tract. Hence the safest time of the day to 
enjoy fruit is about two hours before a meal. 
In the ordinary routine of meals, this would 
be at 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. 

On the other hand there are exigencies and 
conditions when fruit may be artificially 
sweetened. So, for instance, in the employ- 

58 



ment of sugar in the preservation or seasoning 
of fruit, we have a logical and hygienic basis 
in the fact that sugar is a natural ingredient 
in fruit, being one of its main and indispensa- 
ble elements. With perhaps the exception of 
the lemon, all full-grown and perfectly ripe 
fruits are sweet and congenial, both to the pal- 
ate and to the gastric juice. When, however, 
the fruit has had an incomplete ripening ow- 
ing to insufficient exposure to the sun, or to an 
excess of humidity in the air and soil, etc., or 
perhaps in a premature picking, its acidity has 
had neither the time nor the conditions to ac- 
complish its evolution into a natural sweet- 
ness. To avoid the corrosion which this un- 
modified acidity may have upon the lining of a 
sensitive stomach and intestines, it may, by 
way of expediency, be advisable to artificially 
increase the sugar percentage of the fruit, 
preferably by the aid of cooking. This sweet- 
ening of the fruit tends to balance up its de- 
ficiency of sugar, and thus by a neutralization 
of its acidity, bring about an arbitrary, though 
under the circumstances, hygenically defensi- 
ble ripening. This expediency, of course, 
would only be advisable in the absence of ripe 
fruit, or — as in the northern climes — in the 
absence of fresh fruit at all. 

But when this sweetening process is ex- 
tended to foodstuffs whose composition, com- 
plete in itself, makes no constitutional demand 
for an increased percentage of sweets, as in 

59 



the case of vegetables and cereals, and in the 
various forms of mushes and pastry, etc., the 
matter of adding free sugar to the food takes 
on altogether different aspects. In this case 
the science of nutrition cannot present a single 
logical argument in its favor. To add sugar to 
the mush or breadstuffs in any form, is con- 
trary to the constitutional needs of the starch, 
and can never amalgamate with its starchy 
material. Hence such a mixture can only 
amount to a mechanical, not a chemical or 
vital association; and when the foodstuff en- 
ters the stomach and comes in touch with the 
gastric secretions, where the oxygen, iron and 
vegetable salts, presenting a greater affinity 
for the sugar, cause the latter to desert the 
starch, to enter into a combination with the 
gastric secretions and its tissues. This, of 
course, gives rise to the usual fermentation 
and decomposition of the food-material, with 
all its incidents of systemic poisoning. 

A last objection to the consumption of su- 
gar in connection with starch or proteids, lies 
in the fact that its digestion proceeds at a far 
quicker rate than that of the proteids, and con- 
sequently leaves these foodstuffs without the 
available gastric juice for their successful di- 
gestion. 



60 



CHAPTER Xn. 



MILK AS A FOOD, AND MILK AS A 
POISON 



The employment of milk in the preparation 
of our food, means a great dietetic error. For 
milk, being in its very nature an antidote, 
tends to neutralize every foodstuff with which 
it is combined. Furthermore, as the digestion 
of milk is not so much the business of the 
stomach, but has its main field in the duoden- 
um, where it depends upon the secretions of 
the liver for its emulsification, — the inference 
is that milk, to be salely and profitably en- 
joyed, demands an empty stomach and a pow- 
erful liver. In accordance with this fact the 
infant, whose food consists solely of milk, is 
equipped with a liver which, compared with 
that of an adult, holds the relation of 3 to 1 — 
in size as in power — an equation which natur- 
ally means that a promiscuous use of milk in 
the diet of an adult is decidedly harmful to a 
weak or even ordinary liver. 

It is because of this failure of the stomach 
to accomplish the digestion of milk, that the 
latter becomes an antidote in relation to any 

61 



other substance, simultaneously entering the 
stomach. For being unequal to the task of its 
digestion, the stomach in the presence of milk 
closes its labors and seals up its secretory 
glands. This accounts for the fact that an oth- 
erwise deadly potion of arsenic, or any other 
poison may be introduced into the stomach, 
suspended in one-half gallon of milk, and 
never assert its identity. Having closed its 
channels of secretion and absorption, the 
stomach is rendered immune to any graver 
physiological shock — a circumstance which 
provides ample time and opportunity for a 
safe removal of the poison from the system. 

So far so good. But the same quality in 
milk which isolates the arsenic from acting on 
the stomach, also prevents the latter from di- 
gesting wholesome, nutritious foods. It places 
an impenetrable barrier between the protein 
substances and the secretory cells of the gas- 
tric digestion. This makes it doubly difficult 
for the digestion of foods like meat, eggs, but- 
ter, cheese, fish, beans, etc., in which the main 
constituents are proteids, and consequently 
depend on the stomach for their digestion. 
Hence to make milk a safe part of diet, even 
to the healthy stomach and liver, it must be 
taken distinct and separate from any other 
foodstuffs, and at a time when the stomach is 
empty. 

The fact of milk being an antidote brings 
out its real value,or non-value, in relation to 

62 



cooking. Any form of milk-dressing, milk- 
gravy or milk-soup, lessens the digestibility 
and nourishment of the preparation to the ex- 
tent it isolates itself from the action of the gas- 
tric juices. To a hyper-sensitive stomach — ca- 
tarrhal or ulcerated— this very quality of milk 
mixture may, hewover, serve a good purpose, 
by subduing the digestive irritation of such 
strongly polarized vegetables as spinach, horse 
radish, parsnips, turnips and tomatoes. The 
advantage, however, can only be considered 
in the light of a palliative or expediency, as its 
ultimate influence over the system must lead 
to a progressive weakening of the digestive 
and assimilative functions. Every effort 
should be made to restore the stomach to its 
power of normal digestion. 



63 



CHAPTER Xin. 



PROF. ELI METCHINOKOFF AND THE 
SOUR MILK BACILLUS 



The milk preparation placed oij the market 
in form of lactic tablets, yougurth, lactone, 
fermalac, etc., are aU founded on the theory 
that the human organism is constitutionally 
imperfect and inadequate to maintain its own 
physiological integrity. To save the situation, 
however, science comes to the rescue with a 
system of serum therapy, which consists in the 
introduction into the human organism, either 
through hypodermal injections, inhalations, or 
by way of the mouth, — of microbic cultures 
prepared from substances, the corruption of 
which, in order to be effective, must be even 
more destructive than the corruptive pro- 
cesses at work in the body itself. In other 
words, the forces called upon for aid and pro- 
tection, must be more sanguine and ferocious 
than the forces which are to be conquered: the 
poison of the injection must be more corrupt 
than the poison already active in the diseased 
system. 

Now by its very readiness to yield a mi- 

64 



crobe culture, milk has always been selected 
as a means of generating the alien microbe 
when its importation into the organism had to 
go via the digestive field; and it is to Prof. 
Metchnikoff, in particular, that we are in- 
debted for a more elaborate and detailed 
treatment of disease by these systematic, fer- 
mentative processes. 

Having discovered a bacillus putrificans coli 
in the human bowel, which as a product of in- 
testinal decomposition, is undoubtedly detri- 
mental to human health, the famous French 
savant, in his attempt to affect its elimination, 
ignored the fact that this bacillus is not a 
genetic, constitutional output of human na- 
ture, but the abnormal product of abnormal 
living; abnormal food, and abnormal habits, 
Hence in place of instructing the patient how 
to live so as to prevent any further generation 
in his system of these parasites, Prof. Metch- 
nikoff proceeds to generate a bacteria de novo, 
more destructive than the old, and by which 
he proposes to wage a general war of extermi- 
nation against the putrifactive bacillus of 
man's intestine. In place of so improving and 
fortifying human nature that she may victor- 
iously fight her own battles, he displaces her 
by an alien, life-destroying agent, which for- 
ever barred from an amalgamation with the 
forces of legitimate, progressive, evolutionary 
growth, retains its position to the organism of 
an enemy of her household. 

65 



Prof. Metclmikoff holds the position of a 
general who, with his country in the throes of 
a civil war, invites the armed assistance of a 
foreign nation to subdue the domestic rebel- 
lion — later on, however, to realize that a still 
more formidable issue confronts him is his re- 
lation to the victorious invader who refuses to 
relinquish its grip over the subdued subjects. 
In either case there is a danger, that the con- 
queror will not forego his tempting oppor- 
tunity for continued spoil and conquests. 

This is exactly the attitude of the human 
organism after it has become inoculated by the 
bacillus bulgaricus, introduced into the world- 
pharmacopoeia by Prof. Metchnikoff in some 
artificial form of sour milk, such as yougurth, 
lactic tablets, fermalac, etc., — or any of the re- 
cently developed fermenting, decomposing 
microbe cultures. Nothing is more remote 
from true health than the lethargic feeling of 
false peace which may follow the use of these 
preparations. The system has lost its power 
of resistance and submits readily to every 
pathologic change of its cell-life and general 
metabolism. Hence, the sensation of strength 
and flush of vitality which the microbe culture 
frequently gives rise to, is a mere surface re- 
action, and refers to the strength of the alien 
bacillus, rather than to the resilience of the 
subdued human organism, which fundament- 
ally and constitutionally is growing weaker. 

To give strength and plausibility to his 

66 



theory, Prof. Metchnikoff refers to the people 
of Bulgaria, whose universally renowned 
longevity he declares is due to their immoder- 
ate indulgence in sour milk. An investigation 
of the subject, however, has shown that as a 
rnatter of fact, the people of Bulgaria use very 
little sour milk in their diet. According to Dr. 
Gundurm — a royal health commissioner of 
Croatia — who has spent many years of study 
among the Bulgarian peasantry, — the cause of 
their long life is not in the indulgence in sour 
milk— not even "yougurth"— but in a dish 
called "tschessnakova" — in English, garlic — 
and which, together with black rye-bread, 
forms the main body of their daily diet. "The 
fact is," says Dr. Gundurm," that the popula- 
tion of Bulgaria eats or drinks very little 
"kiselo miljeko," as sour milk is known there. 
But they eat great quantities of garlic: three 
times daily. 'Tscheschnakova Tscherba, ' or gar- 
lic soup, is the favorite dish. It is prepared 
with grated garlic, cold water and paprika — a 
natural pepper. The Bulgarians are strictly 
orthodox. They have many and long periods 
of fasting, during which products of animals 
may not be eaten. These fasts are rigidly kept 
and during that time garlic and garlic soup are 
the principal dishes. "As the result of my five 
years of investigation in Bulgaria," concludes 
the Croation health-commissioner in his official 
report, "I have come to the firm conviction 
that the remarkable health and long life of the 

67 



simple abstemious ways of living and the 
Bulgarians is due to nothing else than their 
abundance of garlic in their food." 



68 



CHAPTER XIV. 



HOW CERTAIN COMBINATIONS, SUCH AS 
MILK AND FRUIT, FRUIT AND CERE- 
ALS, MILK AND MEAT, AFFECT 
DIGESTION AND NUTRITION 



The combination of milk and fruit has di- 
gestive and physiological possibilities only 
when restricted to certain limiting conditions, 
such as an empty stomach, free from digestive 
labors ; a liver with no symptoms of complica- 
tions, or the absence of any other form of 
nourishment save the fruit in connection with 
the milk. 

Being in itself largely a proteid, the behav- 
ior of milk in the system resembles that of any 
other proteid, such as eggs, meat, fish, cheese, 
etc., which means that in case it fails to digest, 
it breaks down into processes of decomposi- 
tion. The difference between the proteids and 
straches, with regard to indigestion, lies in the 
fact that the latter ferments, and the former 
decomposes — while fruit, being at once a sol- 
vent and a disinfectant, counteracts the bac- 
terial processes by a system of gastric house- 
cleaning all its own. But while fruit by its 

69 



germicidal properties thus prevents bacterial 
invasions, it also prevents, or at least inter- 
feres with, digestion, as the gastric and intes- 
tinal secretions, required for the digestion of 
starches and proteids, cease to flow in the 
presence of fruit-acids. This action of the 
fruit, which in the digestion of starches and 
proteids proves itself a hinderance, may in its 
relation to the digestion of milk, become a pos- 
itive aid, owing to the peculiar character of 
milk, which being an albuminoid, is digested 
neither in the mouth nor in the stomach, but 
in the intestine, where the fruit-acid forms a 
powerful help to the liver and pancreas in the 
processes of emulsification. 

This explains at once the seeming incon- 
gruity in the relation of fruit to milk, as com- 
pared to its relation to meat, cheese and other 
proteids. For as already has been shown, by 
its power of disinfection, fruit keeps the putri- 
f active bacillus out of the digestive field; 
while on the other hand it becomes a hinder- 
ance to the digestion to the extent it inhibits 
or neutralizes the flow of the normal secretions 
demanded for a successful starch and proteid 
digestion. It is furthermore this very action 
of fruit in relation to milk, that gives rise to 
the sensation of successful digestion, when in 
fact no digestion has taken place at all. The 
gastric activity has been limited to a mere pro- 
cess of disinfection by means of which the 
otherwise inevitable bacterial invasion of the 

70 



digestive field has been inhibited. Hence the 
success of the milk- and fruit-combinations is 
essentially of a negative quality, with its sole 
virtue in the prevention of a systemic poison- 
ing, generated by itself. 

But even this advantage is lost if to the 
milk and fruit combination is added meat, 
beans, bread, egg, etc., or any form of starch 
or proteid foodstuffs; as, in the first place, the 
presence of the fruit-acid in the mouth will 
close the glands of the ptyaline secretion, on 
which the starch depends for its digestion;— 
and, in the second place, the same acid will in- 
hibit the secretions in the stomach of the hy- 
dro-chloric acid on which depends the diges- 
tion of the proteids. Hence, the only safe way 
to enjoy milk and fruit is to take them on an 
empty stomach, distinct and separate, with an 
interval of at least two hours, — the milk al- 
ways to precede the fruit in the order of their 
consumption. This insures a well-needed acid 
to the liver, in its task of emulsifying the milk, 
so as to render it susceptible to the lacteal ab- 
sorption. 

The effect of a mixture of milk and meat is 
particularly hostile to the orderly unfoldment 
of the life-and health-sustaining forces of the 
body. Besides the general interference with 
the action of the digestive juices, the combina- 
tion of milk with the uric acid, present in the 
meat, generates dangerous alkaloidal bodies, 
which in case of ptomain development may 

71 



strike at life with the suddenness and fatality 
of a deadly poison. 

The fate of the meat suspended in a med- 
ium of pepsin, whose disinfective properties, 
when divorced from hydrochloric acid, are 
none — and in a temperature of 97° Fahr. — is 
readily seen. For the ways of alimentation 
are two only: digestion and decomposition. If 
the meat is not digested and assimilated, it is 
turned into corruption, with its inevitable con- 
sequence of systemic poisoning. Hence, a 
principle in diet — ever to be held inviolable — 
is to avoid mixtures of milk with meat. 



12 



CHAPTER XV. 



THE EFFECT ON THE SYSTEM OF MALTED 
MILK AND ICE CREAM 



Tlie value of malted milk rests on its non- 
fermentative constitution. The isolating, en- 
capsulating properties of the malt, while pre- 
venting it from bacterial attacks, also prevents 
it from the action of the digestive secretions, 
which means that to a large extent the prep- 
aration passes through the system undigested 
and unassimilated. Its stimulating influence 
is due to its large percentage of "free'' sugar, 
which always has an affinity for oxygen. It is 
this power of the sugar to attract oxygen from 
the system and conduct it into the digestive 
field that gives rise to a frictional glow and 
subsequent burst of liberated, functional 
vigor, throughout the organism. But, as in all 
cases of stimulation, the system itself has to 
pay for its sudden invigoration, in terms of 
future depletion, so in the case of malted milk 
the effort of the stomach and liver, to separate 
the malt from the milk, gives rise to a great ex- 
penditure of energy, without being accom- 
panied by any adequate nutritional recom- 



pense. It shares with common milk the qual- 
ity of rendering any substance with which it is 
made to combine, difficult to digest ; hence, it is 
safe to say that there is no advantage in the 
use of malted milk, which is not also obtain- 
able in the use of ordinary milk. In either 
form it should be taken alone, and modified 
with lime water, in the proportion of one tea- 
spoonful to a cup. 

Now as to the safety or unsafety of the 
milk preparation known as ice cream, it must 
always be borne in mind that it is a combina- 
tion of cream, sugar and flavoring extracts, 
with a temperature at the point of zero. This 
at once makes plain the relation of ice cream 
to human digestion — its benefits as well as its 
dangers. For, as no digestion can normally 
proceed at a temperature short of 97° Fahr., 
it follows that taken as a dessert, at the end of 
a Sunday dinner, a dish of ice cream falls like 
a blighting frost over the digestive labors, 
bringing their operations to a deadlock if not 
speedily relieved by a rush of blood and nerve 
power to the digestive field, at the expense of 
the other organs and functions of the system. 
That the system must pay in full for the dissi- 
pation, in terms of mscular and nervous en- 
ergy, is plainly indicated in the general drow- 
siness experienced after such an unwise indul- 
gence. 

Yet, the low temperature is not the only 
objection to ice cream as an element of a re- 

74 



spectable dinner. Its constitutional make-up 
of sugar and cream will by its very nature give 
rise to fermentation of the food with which it 
is combined, according to the inevitable law 
that obtains in the realm of chemistry — 
whether the processes of the latter take place 
in the human stomach or in the chemical lab- 
oratory; — that whenever sugar is added to 
starches, to proteids or to fats, the result is 
an evolution of poisonous acids, arising in 
consequence of the inevitable digestive break- 
down into processes of fermentation and de- 
composition. 

However, there are times and conditions 
when ice cream is dietetically legitimate, 
whether enjoyed under the high temperature 
of the body — as in fevers — or in the high tem- 
perature of the season — as in the summer heat. 
But the condition — never to be ignored — is the 
empty stomach; and the isolation from any 
other foodstuff. As a further guaranty for 
safety in enjoying the luxury of ice cream, the 
liver and kidneys should be in normal working 
order. 

If these conditions are complied with, ice 
cream may be an enjoyable dish, and beneficial 
to the extent it reduces the high temperature, 
and adds energy and proteid, in an easily as- 
similated form, to a fever-consumed system. 
The ice as a heat absorbent attracts the blood 
from the periphelial tissues of the body, and 
this tends to relieve the congestion and stag- 

75 



nation of the general circulation. But this 
benefit is altogether lost if the ice cream is in- 
dulged in the form of dessert at the close of a 
meal, when the stomach is in the throes of a 
laborious digestion. It is not so much the 
things themselves that hurt us, as the manner 
in which we enjoy them. 



76 



CHAPTER XVI. 



CAN THE CHEFS AND CAPTAINS OF THE 

KITCHEN BE TRUSTED WITH OUR 

PHYSIOLOGICAL WELFARE? 



The nicety of adjustment existing between 
the needs of the organism and the supply of 
food, is lost to the individual when he permits 
his system to be gorged by undietetic mixtures, 
either in the form of preparations of the food 
itself, or in the combinations of the heterogen- 
ous dishes thus prepared. For through these 
mixtures an altogether alien taste is imparted 
to the food, and as the chief function of sea- 
soning lies in its stimulating effect on the gas- 
tric secretions, relative to the digestion of 
food, which again means an undue irritation 
of the glandular mechanism, that produces the 
sensation of appetite — it follows that the nor- 
mal relation between the self-conscious irrita- 
tion of wants felt as hunger, and the uncon- 
scious or unperceived needs or necessities of 
a system, is entirely lost, as long as the indi- 
vidual proceeds to indulge in things and ingre- 
diencies for which his organism has positively 
no vital needs — neither quantitatively or 
qualitatively. By a clever juggling with su- 

77 



gar, grease and flavoring extract, the cook can 
so mask the original character of food that the 
stomach, utterly deceived as to the power of 
the charge, proceeds to whip its secretory 
glands into activity, urging the individual to 
continued indulgence, far after the needs of 
the nutritional system have been satisfied. 

There is a pathetic, not to say tragic, ele- 
ment in the trust and confidence with which 
we accept the culinary manipulations and gus- 
tatory sleight-of-hand performance of this 
dangerous functionary of the kitchen. Under 
his guidance we are rendered utterly blind 
both to the needs and the capacities of our 
digestive system, while losing all sense of the 
life-and-health-determining flavors contained 
in the uncontaminated natural foods. 

While constantly devising new schemes 
and methods to affect control over the activi- 
ties of the world of microbes and bacillus, by a 
scrupulous disinfection of every article ex- 
posed to public usage, we are serenely indif- 
ferent to the infections arising from the ignor- 
ance or unscrupulous boldness of our cooks. 
Thus, like Prof. Metchnikoff, we may bake our 
napkins, sterilize our milk, and immerse our 
salad lettuce in a pot of boiling water, as safe- 
guard against microbic invasion — and yet re- 
main indifferent with regard to the utter ig- 
norance of every dietic and physiologic prin- 
ciple of the chief functionary of the realm — 
the cook himself. A railroad engineer, a 

78 



street-car conductor, or a chauffeur, are com- 
pelled to acquire a knowledge of the principles 
and factors involved in the operation of their 
respective machines, but a cook is permitted 
to take charge of the most vitally important 
department of the home — the kitchen — where 
is prepared and combined the elements on 
which, as living, vegetative creatures, we de- 
pend for our health and strength — without 
subjecting him to a single examination with 
regard to the principles involved in dietetic 
or physiologic chemistry. The effect of food 
combinations on digestion and assimilation, 
and the reactions of these mixtures in relation 
to dyspepsia, catarrh and general functional 
disturbances, have not the remotest meaning 
or significance to him. We are very particular 
that our baker delivers his bread in sterilized, 
hermetically sealed paper-wrappers, but take 
small interest in the treatment of the bread 
itself — its arsenic bleached flour; its sponge, 
soured by yeast-spores, sweetened by saccha- 
rine, lightened by soda and stiffened by alumn 
— ingredients which both chemically, mechan- 
ically and vitally, undermine the integrity of 
the sensitive mucous lining of stomach, in- 
testines and kidneys — while, as an end-effect, 
poisoning the entire circulation with its fer- 
mentative processes. 

Or how about the personality of the man 
himself with whom we trust the serious busi- 
ness of turning out our daily bread? What 

79 



about the influence of his moral and physical 
nature on the contents of the dough into which 
he pours his breath, and digs his hands? Are 
we not daily reminded, by investigations of 
the psychic and moral laws,which are operat- 
ing back of mental and physical existance, 
that emotions are terrible factors in human 
life, and that the physiological processes of 
our nature are both directly and indirectly in- 
fluenced by our psychic and mental indul- 
gences. Prof. Elmer Gates proved, by perfect 
scientific methods, the power of anger to 
poison a glass of water in which the angry 
subject had immerced his hand; while the 
same authority found that food taken into the 
stomach by a man in anger generated poison- 
ous changes in his gastric secretions and seri- 
ously affected his whole system. 



80 



CHAPTER XVn. 



THE FAILURE IN DEPENDING ON SYMP- 
TOMS FOR A DIAGNOSIS OF 
DIGESTIVE DISORDERS 



While we recognize the importance of 
educating our children in the scientific treat- 
ment of plants and animals — the science and 
philosophy of food, and its sane combinations, 
on which the sole possibility of physical 
health, strength and endurance is based — has 
as yet no true representation in the realm of 
public instruction. And furthermore, when 
broken down through dietic errors, the indi- 
vidual appeals to his physician for help and 
council, he is generally advised to "eat any- 
thing that agrees with him" and "take the 
medicine faithfully." 

Such advice, however, is one of the most 
pathetic errors committed by medical prac- 
tice against humanity. To advise a person to 
be gauged by his own taste, when his very 
position as diseased, indicates the abnormal 
and unreliable condition of his taste as well 
as appetite — is inconsiderate to a point of in- 
humanity. A stomach, perpetually outraged by 

81 



a long career of dietetic errors, drastic medi- 
cation, digestive tonics, purgatives, elimi- 
nants, etc., is no more reliable as a guide for 
the quantity and quality of diet, than the man 
with burst ear-drums, is to be trusted as a 
musical critic. There is nothing graver in the 
mistakes of medical practice than to turn a 
patient over to the whims and caprices of 
an overstimulated and unbalanced appetite. 
Furthermore, a man^s stomach may often 
be the strongest part of his constitution, 
enduring outrages, with apparant impunity 
to the owner, until function upon function of 
his physiological make-up, is breaking down 
under the colosal strain of accumulative sys- 
temic poisoning. Its mucous linings may be 
torn by ulcers and pustules, bleeding from 
abrasions, and reeking with infections — and 
yet endure, with no particular demonstration 
to the owner, almost incredible abuses in eat- 
ing drinking and smoking. Drunkards with 
ulcerated stomachs may continue to indulge 
in immoderate quantities of strong liquors, 
with only slight gastric inconveniences. 

The explanation of this strange phenome- 
non is found in the fact that nature in the 
course of her pathological career, adopts a 
system of chloroforming or rather asphyx- 
iating her morbid processes, so as to render 
her nerve-paths and nerve-endings insensible 
to the extent the advancing disease causes the 
tissues to be useless in the service of life. 

82 



There is a supreme economy in the organiza- 
tion and distribution of vitality in the body, 
and the moment pain ceases to be useful as a 
means of warning to the disease-threatened 
organism, it ceases to irritate and to shatter 
the conduits of the nervous apparatus. 

For pain is an effort of local nerve centers 
to call the attention of self-conciousness to a 
threatening danger. The center of concious- 
ness which controls the sympathetic, vegeta- 
tive, involuntary, "subconscious" nervous 
system, is the Modulla Oblongata; while the 
center of personal consciousness which directs 
the movements of the cerebro-spinal, volun- 
tary, self-conscious nervous system is located 
in the frontal regions of the cortex. The two 
systems are distinct and independent, though 
their respective impulses may become re- 
flected from one zone or circuit of conscious- 
ness into the other. In other words. Medulla 
deals with man as a vegetative animal — with 
his animation and nutrition; while the cere- 
bro-spinal system deals with him as a self- 
conscious thinker — generating, coordinating 
and directing his impulses of cognition and 
intellection. 

From this it is readily seen that there may 
be sensations within the sphere of the sym- 
pathetic, subconscious system that never rise 
into the sense or feeling of self-consciousness; 
as it is only when the impulse from the former 
becomes sufficiently intense to cause the dis- 

83 



turbance back of it to pass beyond the adjust- 
ing power of the Medulla Oblongata, that the 
latter feels the need of cerebro- spinal or self- 
conscious aid, and thus in consequence, flashes 
the impulse across the circuit of the brain 
consciousness, with its result in pain. This 
means that morbid processes due to dietetic 
and hygienic transgressions may be constantly 
forming in the system, but remain below the 
level of self-consciousness as long as Medulla 
Oblongata, through the agency of the Opsonic 
reserve forces, has lost the power to dissolve 
them, or to keep them from rising above the 
level of self- conscious sensibility. There may, 
however, be felt a dull sense of discomfort — a 
muffled pain — due to stray impulses, trans- 
mitted sporadically by way of leakage through 
abraded nerve insulations. 

From this it may be easily understood that 
symptoms are not reliable as diagnostic fac- 
tors, and that a disease may be developing in 
our organism and yet be perfectly unknown 
to us. In fact, an individual may revel in 
physiological vigor and defy with seeming im- 
punity every dietetic and hygienic principle, 
and yet fail to realize that his vital system, 
center after center, function after function, is 
gradually jdelding to the conquests of a slowly 
and insiduously advancing general break- 
down. 



84 



CHAPTER XIX. 



THE ONLY ROYAL ROAD OF DIET 



This ''do as you please/' and "eat what 
agrees with you" system has been a great 
barrier to human health. In this staggering 
mixup of our present range of things eatable, 
where human ingenuity constantly invents 
or discovers new means and methods of in- 
dulgence, a haphazard unprincipled ''eat 
what you please" system of diet must nat- 
urally give rise to incalculably dangerous com- 
plications. To be safe, we must act sanely and 
deliberately — and in all the world's system of 
dietetics there is but one safe line of diet: 
the one based upon the judgment of reason, 
in the light of duty, and under the force of 
moral and physical survival- value. Well or 
sick, the individual should be governed by one 
single motive — duty and moral obligation. 
Without the motive of duty to life, for life's 
own sake, diet becomes a mere juggling with 
vital values — a game of chess in which the 
player tries to outwit his physiological limi- 
tations. His object is to win the prize without 
the conquest. To be really and truly well, one 

85 



condition is indispensable: the absolute sur- 
render of craving and appetite, to needs and 
usefulness. The individual must be governed 
by one single object in relation to diet: to eat 
for the sake of health and usefulness only, and 
be ready to drop any desire or appetite out of 
his life, the moment he realizes it as baneful 
to his welfare. Only on such a basis has 
knowlege any real practical and evolutionary 
value — only on our willingness and readiness 
to do what is right, can a knowlege of the right 
serve as a power and an uplift to human life. 
The program for an advanced evolution is ever 
the same; aspiration, knowledge, will — and 
through will, the power of execution. To will, 
to dare, to do, is the formula for every worthy 
and valuable attainment in human evolution. 



CHAPTER XX. 



THE RIGHT AND THE WRONG SIDE 
OF COFFEE 



During the four hundred years coffee has 
been recognized in the western world as a 
popular beverage, its power to control the 
minds and palates of its devotees has con- 
stantly increased. Its immense popularity as 
a world-beverage has not its basis in its taste, 
however, as is the case of sugar, nor in the 
cerebral intoxication with its unreasoning and 
unreal functional exuberancy, as that of al- 
cohol; but in the energies generated in the 
bean itself, and imparted to the system in the 
form of muscular and vascular release. Hence 
the vital difference in the effects on the 
body, between alcohol and coffee, lies in the 
fact that in the former case the system has 
to pay for its over stimulation, but in the 
latter — if rightly enjoyed — the bean itself 
pays for the expense. This accounts for the 
weakening, exhausting reactions of the 
whisky stimulations, unknown to the "cup 
that cheers but not intoxicates." 

The effect of coffee on the system, how- 
ever, is largely determined by the conditions 

87 



under which it is prepared and enjoyed. Sus- 
pended in the bean is found a volatile sub- 
stance — the empyreumatic oil] — which giveis 
taste and aroma to the coffee, and at the same 
time exerts a reducing and modifying influ- 
ence over the stimulating power contained in 
its twin-principle — the caffeine. Taken to- 
gether, these two elements, hold in a safe 
balance the stimulating and invigorating im- 
pulse contained in the coffee bean. 

But this fine adjustment is available only 
when the coffee has a truly hygienic prepara- 
tion. Exposed to boiling, the caffeine decom- 
poses into an acid — caffeic acid — which 
through the empyreumatic oil breaks down 
into an alkaloid. This changes the entire 
character of the coffee, which, from a bracing, 
self generative invigorant, is turned into a 
nerve-lashing, exhaustive stimulant, in which 
the adjustment or balance between the stim- 
ulating and regenerative powers of the bean 
has been destroyed. Hence coffee should be 
zealously guarded from the boiling pot, and 
should be prepared solely by the process of 
infusion through steaming, or the percolating 
process. 

But apart from these constitutional quali- 
ties of coffee there are other conditions con- 
nected with its use, of which the coffee-drink- 
ing public cannot afford to be in ignorance. 
Barring a mere trace of nitrogen, the coffee 
bean contains no element of nutrition — con- 

88 



sequently is not a food — and must, therefore, 
remain classed as a systemic stimulant. For 
an element which has no cell-building power, 
has not the vital or physiologic legitimacy in 
the system held by food, and hence should not 
share the regularity of the latter as a means 
of replenishment. 

Coffee is a remedy — a medicinal agent — 
introduced by nature in the service of man, 
under conditions when his system demands 
it. Furthermore, as a tropical plant, its 
sphere of virtue must naturally and evolu- 
tionally be connected with environmental in- 
fluences. This will readily be seen when we 
recognize that the circulation of the system 
in general is under the influence of the quality 
of pressure received respectively from without 
and from within the organism — from without, 
in the low temperature of the atmosphere as- 
sisting the blood from the circumference to the 
center — and again from within, by the pump- 
ing action of the heart, forcing the blood from 
the center back to the circumference. In the 
tropics, however, where the temiDerature is 
higher outside than inside the body — the blood 
in its course from the periphery would be as- 
sisted in its exchange if an agent of expedi- 
ency were introduced as a modifying force in 
the organism. Such an agent we find in the 
high percentage of quick combustible sugar 
in the tropical fruit; in the high stimulant of 
the native spices, and in the re-invigorating 

89 



principle contained in the coffee bean. In 
other words, coffee by its power to stimulate 
the innervation of the central vessels and tis- 
sues, and thus direct the blood-stream center- 
ward, accomplishes the same result from 
within the organism, as the lower temperature 
of the temperate zone does from without. 

This makes of coffee a tropical beverage, 
not only genetically but also conditionally and 
qualitatively. But as on the other hand each 
individual is a world in himself, with needs 
and necessities all his own, we may expect to 
find in the general temperament of man, such 
tendencies and characteristics which may de- 
mand for their modification and adjustment 
the same expediency which is represented by 
coffee in the tropics. Hence, as an occasional 
nerve stimulant and temperamental adjuster, 
coffee may be enjoyed even in the temperate 
zone by those whose temperament is subdued, 
and whose nervous exchanges are under con- 
trol. By the high-strung, highly organized 
and nervously poised individual, coffee should 
not be used. 

Moreover, in the philosophy of nutrition 
there is a principle which should never be lost 
sight of — that the only stimulant which can 
be safely enjoyed as part of our daily menu, is 
the stimulant contained in the food itself. As 
an integral part of its nature, every foodstuff 
contains a stimulant, so poised and adjusted 
that it imparts a natural impulse of power to 

90 



the processes of digestion and assimilation. 
Divorced from this combination, the stimulant 
becomes a mere lash or irritant, which has 
needs and uses only as expediency, when en- 
vironments and conditions make such adjust- 
ments necessary. 

For those, whose temperaments permit the 
use of coffee, no admixture of sugar and cream 
should be allowed to interfere with its virtue. 
Cream especially perverts the nature of coffee 
by reducing its empyreumatic oil into a tannic 
acid compound — at once indigestible and 
toxic, giving rise to the formation of bile acids 
in the liver, with the subsequent appearance 
of a muddy complexion — due to bile pigments 
deposited in the skin. Another precaution of 
no less importance to the safe enjoyment of 
coffee is its temperature. From strong phys- 
iological reasons no beverage should be per- 
mitted to enter the system at a higher tem- 
perature than blood heat, and it may be safely 
said that the greater injury wrought by the 
consumption of coffee lies in its admixtures 
and temperature, rather than in native dis- 
qualifications. 



91 



CHAPTER XXI. 



HOW TO ATTAIN THE GREATEST DEGREE 
OF EFFICIENCY 



There is a strange form of egotism in man- 
kind, which seeks expression in a desire of 
possession of things and objects for their own 
sake — even if the realization of this desire 
threatens with disaster and ruin. 

In our relation to the use of food, and the 
act of eating, this fact is especially eminent. 
For there is a law in life, as inviolable and 
invincible as the law of gravity — that a pos- 
session for which we have no need, becomes a 
burden. Hence, eating, to be conducive to 
health and strength, must have its motive in 
usefulness and service, and its fundamental 
basis in necessity. 

From this it follows that any vegetative 
act which has not its urge and condition in 
conscious necessity, lacks harmony and co- 
operation with the sweep of evolution — which 
means isolation from true growth and pro- 
gress. Every ounce of nourishment we take 
into our system, not prompted by the spirit 
of usefulness, or in response to positive nu- 

92 



tritional needs, is turned into systemic poisons 
and their inevitable cellular break-down into 
enforced eliminations. These eliminations 
arise from a double necessity; partly because 
the poisons must be removed from the system 
to admit the play of organized life, and partly 
because the excess of nourishment represented 
by the poisons, is appropriated, physiologically 
illegitimate, from other systems or organiza- 
tions of growth. For the rule of evolution is 
expressed in terms of elemental justice, which, 
when concretely applied, means balance, 
equity, harmony, growth and power— ener- 
gized and adjusted by the driving force of 
necessity. The universe has limitless supply 
for every true need, but not an ounce for use- 
less possession. Economy is the spirit of evo- 
lution, the condition of growth, and the key 
to power; and to disregard this principle m 
our daily mode of living, invokes the life-dis- 
solving forces of weakness, disease and suffer- 
ing. For what is disease but wrong proprie- 
torship, perverted economy, in which the 
sufferer either tries to use up something to 
which he has no individual rights, or fails to 
utilize and develop something with which 
he has been evolutionally and biologically 
trusted. In the former case, the individual is 
of the egotistic type, with his entire nature 
absorbed in his own growth, intent on the ap- 
propriation of every object of his desire, re- 
gardless of the vital proprietorship of others; 

93 



while in the latter, he fails to assert his own 
legitimate, evolutionary and constitutional 
rights, exposing himself to the life-sapping, 
self-decentralizing influence of alien, egoistical 
forces. 

For it is the balancing action between the 
assets and liabilities of the mental, moral and 
physical imiverse, as related to individual, 
evolutionary rights, that is expressed in the 
personal aspects of good and evil, death and 
suffering, unfoldment and degeneracy. This 
means that whenever an individual has ap- 
propriated more food than the metabolic ex- 
change of his system demand, he inflicts upon 
himself the inconveniences and sufferings, 
that inevitably spring from excess in food and 
drink. In the sluggish system where the cen- 
trifugal forces of elimination are too feeble to 
throw off the excess, the unused waste-de- 
posits condense and crystalize in the joints 
and flexures of the body, where the circulation 
is slow, and readily degenerates into forms 
of rheumatism, gout, neuralgia, hardening of 
the liver and arteries, etc. On the other hand, 
if the individual has the nervous tempera- 
ment, with eliminative powers strong enough 
to dislodge, at the eventual crisis, the result 
of long periods of waste-accumulation — the 
disease may assume the acute type of elimina- 
tion as manifested in pneumonia, typhoid, 
cancer, boils, ulcers or any inflamatory febrile 
waste-removal. In either form of disease, the 

94 



presence of excess of nourishment is clearly 
demonstrated: the presence of supply beyond 
the need, and the power of digestion below the 
power of elimination. 

Back of the entire process of physiological 
morbidity lies the desire of the individual to 
possess and enjoy the things of life for the 
mere sake of personal power and self-gratifi- 
cation. For in assuming this attitude, the 
individual violates the laws of his own being, 
and in the very strain of his self-interest, iso- 
lates himself from the source of his own 
eternal existence, and from all the forces that 
make for health, power and preservation. In 
other words, in place of rendering himself re- 
ceptive to the cosmic urge, and plastic to its 
creative force-currents — with the subsequent 
benefit of a perpetual rejuvenation through 
its purifying drainage and reconstruction of 
his moral, physical as well as psychic nature 
— the self-consumed individual compels the 
life-stream to terminate in himself, and by its 
stagnation harden and congest his nature into 
mental sterility and premature old age. Or in 
the words of the great world philosopher of 
Nazareth: ''he who saves his life shall lose it, 
while he who gives it shall win it everlast- 
ingly." 

Thus the indulgence of the glutton entails 
the consequence of a double transgression or 
double guilt; the destruction of his own self, 
and the .subsequent infringement on the wel- 

95 



fare of other selves. For in a perfectly bal- 
anced universe, the excess of one of its parts 
must necessarily result in the deprivation of 
others. And furthermore, as the balance of 
nature can remain disturbed, no matter how 
minute, only during the lapse of a certain 
cycle of time — a movement is started in the 
very process of the individual transgression, 
by which in the form of physiological derange- 
ment, the system of the trangressor is com- 
pelled to yield up, grain by grain, under the 
travail of disease and suffering, the very 
things he usurped from the elemental stor- 
ages. And this is the personal atonement 
awaiting every transgressor; the inevitable 
condition for the restoration of the broken 
world-harmony, or final return, through the 
dissolving personality of the transgressor, of 
the parts and elements required for the whole- 
ness and completeness of integral universal 
life. 

This fact holds strongly before us the futil- 
ity and danger of a life spent solely for one- 
self. It has been brought home to our con- 
sciousness that we can retain and profit only 
by that which is vitally and fundamentally 
due to us, and that any true advantage in 
health and power, derivable from life, has its 
sole basis and possibility in our evolutionary 
merit and desert. For the same necessity 
which compels the individual to reap what he 
has sown, also keeps him from reaping what 

96 



others, but not he, have sown. Our relation to 
nature and to life, is entirely based on the 
principle of steward-ship: personally we have 
no permanent possession. Personal proprie- 
torship has its sole fact and permanence in 
universal proprietorship, and arises in our ef- 
fort to love our neighbor, not only as ourselves, 
but in ourselves. Life, like water, retains its 
purity only by unceasing exchange. In (dther 
case isolation means stagnation; and the ego- 
ist, who lives for himself only, faces constitu- 
tional degeneracy and decay. 

The lesson taught by the science of life and 
the philosophy of living, is revolutionary in its 
very simplicity and reasonableness. Religion 
and morality have no greater support than in 
the natural science, undogmatically applied. 
It uncovers the paths that lead from guilt to 
punishment, from selfishness to suffering; 
while at the same time it justifies nature to the 
sufferer as she proceeds with relentless en- 
ergy, through the agency of disease, to remove 
the reeking, decomposing, tissue-corroding, 
self -generated waste poisons from the system. 
We become convinced that nature, always 
kind, always helpful and restorative, in her 
very destructiveness carries the possibility 
and ideal of resuscitation and salvation. It is 
in spite of nature that we succumb to her proc- 
esses of vital restoration; while death marks 
the failure of the individual to "make good" 
his part of the program. For what is death but 

97 



the lack of S3^stemic nerve-power to sustain a 
coherent functional reaction to nature's vital 
excavation and elimination of a self-imposed 
physiological breakdown. The majority of 
deaths are practically suicidal, and if occur- 
ring prior to the age of 90 or 100 years, are 
contrary to every law and principle of a pro- 
gressive, health-and-strength promotive evo- 
lution. 



98 



CHAPTER XXn. 



DIET FOR THE LEAN AND FOR 
THE FAT 



As all things come to those who wait, pro- 
viding the conditions are right — so fat will 
come to the lean providing they observe the 
laws of health, and otherwise possess, or 
strive to cultivate, the constitutional nervous 
poise which is conditional for a development 
of adipose tissue. 

As necessary conditions for a normal devel- 
opment of fat, an abundant supply of pure air 
and water must come first on the program. 
Nutrition is a closed event the moment oxy- 
gen fails to enter the vital processes of diges- 
tion and assimilation; and the richest and 
wholesomest food degenerates into waste-mat- 
ter if not bathed and saturated by the oxygen- 
laden air. For while rich food may give in- 
creased weight, even with imperfect breathing 
—yet the latter is not due to a development of 
healthy, physiological tissue, but to its path- 
ological counterfeit— fatty degeneracy. Lean- 
ness and emaciation, if not associated with 

99 



functional disorder in some part of the system, 
are due to a Avant of appropriating power of 
the alimentary zone, and in a deficiency of the 
sympathetic absorption. The restoration of a 
healthy tonicity to the involved centers of nu- 
trition will therefore require the infusion into 
the cell-life of some drastic agent, with powers 
to awaken the dormant metabolic energies of 
the sympathetic system. Hence the first thing 
in the morning, and at least one hour before 
breakfast, should be to drink slowly a glass of 
cool water, seasoned with seven drops of 
lemon juice. A breakfast for the lean should 
contain an easily digestible proteid in some 
such combination as the following: 

1 — A soft boiled egg. 

2 — A generous slice of well baked Southern 
"Hoe-cake" (cornmeal bread) over- 
spread with a teaspoonful of sage 
honey and unsalted butter, or in place 
of honey some stewed fruit. 

3 — A glass of strong malt-extract (to be 
slowly sipped after the breakfast is 
completed). 

The following lunch, containing some light 
meat, selected from the following list, would 
be advisable: 

1 — Roast chicken, roast turkey, wild fowl, 
stewed rabbit, baked surf-fish or 
flounder. 

100 



2_0ne of the following combinations of 
well cooked vegetables: turnips and 
beets; carrots, parsley and stewed 
onions; cauliflower and parsley; spin- 
ach and egg-plant; sununer squash 
and string beans. 
3_XJnpolished rice, or cornmeal mush, or 
baked potato (either sweet or Irish), 
or in absence of either, whole wheat, 
well baked bread. 
4_0ne cup of tea of wild cherry bark (to be 
slowly sipped at the close of the 
meal). 
At 4:30 p.m., if the stomach feels empty, 
some fresh fruit is permissable, preferably ap- 
ples, sweet grapes, fresh pineapple, persim- 
mons, pears— but only one variety at a time. 
For the evening meal, one may enjoy: 
1— Lettuce, celery, carrots and parsley; 
lettuce, black olives, chopped cabbage 
and parsley, etc. 
2 — A generous slice of stale, hard rye or 

whole-wheat bread. 
3— English walnuts or blanched almonds 

(to take the place of meat). 
4 — One cup of Lahman's pure cocoa, un- 
sweetened (to be slowly sipped at the 
close of the meal). 
At the time of retiring, take a well ripe, 
raw apple, or a blood-warm, well agitated 

101 



glass of milk — as temperament and inclina- 
tion may decide. 

Each meal should be preceded by a tea- 
spoon of olive oil. 

Twice a week at bedtime, take a sitz-bath 
of 100° Fahr., containing a strong motherwort 
decoction; — and once a week a tub-bath, 107° 
Fahr., with an infusion of Epsom salts: one 
pound to each ten gallons of water. 

Cocoanut oil and olive oil, used in a com- 
plete body massage upon retiring, are aids to 
nature in building up the tissues. 

An important rule to observe is to take an 
outdoor walk of about one mile between each 
meal, and a short sleep of some ten or fifteen 
minutes immediately before dining. 

The intervening time in the morning, be- 
tween rising and breakfasting, should be spent 
in light, physical health-culture exercises, 
deep, rhythmic breathing, cold towel rubs, etc. 
And above all ,as one of the greatest promot- 
ers of digestion, cultivate a spirit of imper- 
turbable harmony in word and act through ev- 
ery phase and aspect of life. 



102 



CHAPTER XXni. 



OBESITY 



As obesity is due to either the one or the 
other— or to both, of the two causes: excess of 
fat-producing material in the food, or defi- 
ciency in oxygen for a thorough combustion — 
it follows that the only scientific and sane rem- 
edy to be recommended to those, overburdened 
by fat, is to abstain from the former and in- 
crease the latter. And, furthermore, as the 
excessive fat-producing material has its es- 
sential and primary representation in the 
sifted white flour and extracted sugars of com- 
merce, the first and absolutely inevitable step 
will be to remove these two items from the 
diet. The next move is to introduce an earnest 
and practical system of deep and rhythmic 
breathing. 

The corrective role played by deep breath- 
ing in the case of obesity is readilv ar>Dreciated 
in the fact that the formation of abnormal 
adipose tissue proceeds through a more or less 
faulty metabolism associated with the deeper 
cause of insufficient oxygenation of the blood. 

The safe-guard against fatty degeneracy is 
consequently to be found in a clean, whole- 

103 



some, natural diet, made up mostly of raw, 
juicy fruits and vegetables — enjoyed at dis- 
tinct and separate times. Breakfast if, taken 
at all, should consist solely of: 

1 — Baked apples, or stewed prunes, or 
some one variety of fresh fruit in 
season. 

For lunch a few nuts and a combination- 
salad made up of some one group of congenial 
vegetables, like the following: 

1 — Pecan-nuts or English walnuts. 

2 — Lettuce, raw carrots and turnips ; or let- 
tuce, onions, tomatoes and parsley; 
or lettuce, chopped cabbage, black 
olives, served with home-made may- 
onnaise dressing. 

The menu for the evening meal may be 
composed of: 

1 — Beet-tops, summer-squash and boiled 
cabbage (plain) , or dandelion greens, 
turnips and mustard greens, or spin- 
ach and celery, or stewed onions, car- 
rots and parsley. 

2 — Hard, toasted, whole-wheat or rye 
bread (one or two slices), or a baked 
Irish potato. 

No fresh bread ,mushes, puddings or cakes 
at any time. 

AVOID beans, peas and lentels. 

104 



Lean meat may be used three or four times 
a week, preferably at the noon-meal, but never 
in the fried form of preparation. MHk, cream, 
butter and animal fats should be carefully 
avoided. 

At time of retiring enjoy a raw, tart apple. 

Every morning, an hour before the first 
meal, drink a cup or two of hot water, contain- 
ing the juice of one-half lemon. 

Plenty of brisk walking is a splendid ex- 
ercise for the fat, also the practice of such 
games as golf and tennis. 

Hot baths containing one pound of Epsom 
salts to each six gallons of water should be 
taken at night,— three or four times a week, 
the length of time not to exceed 15 minutes. 

Like leanness, however, obesity is often in- 
fluenced by the attitude of the mind. As the 
former may be aggravated by restlessness, dis- 
content, worrv and nervous tension — condi- 
tions that like a high-frequency electric cur- 
rent, consume the insulating protective cover- 
ings of its circuit— so, on the other hand, the 
sluggish, indifferent, indolent nature, may by 
its mental inertia, cause stagnation in the vital 
currents of the system, from which rise depos- 
its of degenerate tissue. Vital interest in the 
world and its humanizing issues; willingness 
to serve and to sacrifice, ever sensitized and 
responsive to the wants and sufferings of 
others — may often be more efficacious than 

105 



dietetic and physio-cultural measures in re- 
storing the poise, harmony and beauty to the 
grandest creation of universal life — the hu- 
man body. 



106 



CHAPTER XXIV. 



PRACTICAL HEALTH-CULTURE FOR THE 
BUSY MAN 



As a basis for the attainment of the highest 
success in health-culture, is must be borne in 
mind that we grow in the direction of our mo- 
tives. The purpose of an act determines its 
character, strength and value as a part in our 
evolution. A movement which has itself for 
purpose — i. e., seeks progress for its own sake 
— limits to that extent its possibilities of de- 
velopment, and like outbursts in elemental na- 
ture, such as storms, thunders, hurricanes, 
etc., — in ceasing to be serviceable to general 
growth, become isolated, and in their isolation, 
by recoiling on their own centers, generate a 
new energy, which by its new keynote of vi- 
bration, breaks up and eliminates the original 
movement. It is the law of life, at work in 
the vastness of cosmic systems, as well as in 
the microscomic unit of the individual atom, 
that every process hostile to the unity of life, 
by its very activity becomes self-destructive. 
The vision of solidarity, the call of service, the 
urge for usefulness in relation to society and 
humanity, should constitute the ruling mo- 
tive-powers back of every breath of air and 

107 



traction of muscle. Inspired by this central- 
izing, unifying thought, every stroke of prac- 
tice will increase the force of the constructive 
and regenerative reactions upon the system. 
In place of invoking the merely mechanical 
and elemental energies of professional cham- 
ber gymnastics, the individual, by his larger 
motives of universality and solidarity, con- 
nects himself with the deeper force-aspects of 
nature, forming conduits with the most vital, 
the most tissue-strengthening and health-sus- 
taining of all world-dynamics — the forces of 
love, of will and of individuality. 

Hence, upon awakening, begin the exer- 
cises by fixing firmly in the mind the motive 
and significance of the dav's endeavors. 

1 — Take a deep breath. Extend hands and 
feet, with alternating intensity, re- 
peating the tension some ten or fif- 
teen times. Then turn on face and 
continue the stretch the same number 
of times. 
2 — Turn on back, seize the ankles firmly 
and make strong efforts in extending 
the legs, causing the tremor of me- 
chanic shocks to go through the en- 
tire body. 
3 — Let go the ankles; extend the legs with 
great force, assuming the attitude of 
one who determinedly kicks at an ob- 
ject. Repeat twenty-five times, or 
until the muscle is fatigued. 

108 



4 — Rise on feet, swing arms in circular 
rings, imitating the arms of a wind- 
mill in action ; while at the same time, 
exhale and inhale, in deep, rhythmic 
processes — aiming at a complete fill- 
ing and emptying of the lungs. No 
residuous air to remain in the lungs. 
The movement of the arms should 
proceed in perfect independence of 
the action of the lungs. Do not over- 
strain; cease when fatigued. 

5 — Slap both sides of the chest with palms 
of hands turned concave, while con- 
tinuing the deep breathing move- 
ments. 

6 — Bend forward, reaching the floor with 
the hands, followed by a correspond- 
ing backward swing — the latter, how- 
ever, with knees bent. 

7 — Rotate head on shoulders — following 
closely the limits of extension in all 
directions. 

8 — Rotate body with the hips for a pivot, 
while the hands are clasped over the 
crown of the head. 

9 — Place yourself between the backs of 
two strong, heavy chairs, with a firm 
grip on each. Then send your foot 
forwards and backwards with great 
striking energy, while lending force 

109 



to the movement bv a backward bend 
of the spine and head. Alternate the 
position of the feet. 

10 — Hands on hips ; sit down in a squatting 
position, resting on the toes. Con- 
tinue rising and sitting until the mus- 
cles are fatigued. 

11 — Before dressing, rub entire body with 
a wet towel — especially the toes, foot- 
soles, pit of arms and groins. 

12 — Take a short walk before breakfast 
with sustained, rhythmic breathings. 
Upon returning, spend five minutes 
prone on the face, thoroughly re- 
laxed, before eating breakfast. 

Each exercise should be continued only to 
the point of fatigue, and intervened by a 
moment of perfect relaxation. 



110 



CHAPTER XXV. 



SPECIFIED BILL-OF-FARE FOR ONE 
WEEK'S HYGIENIC DIET 



Monday. 
Breakfast: 

l_Oiiion-oatmeal-flaxseed cream: 

(To prepare: soak one tablespoon 
of Scotch, steel-cut oatmeal and one 
teaspoon un-gronnd flaxseed m a 
quart of water over night. Add m 
the morning, a sliced onion— the size 
of an egg— and a little salt, and keep 
at a boiling point for one and one-half 
hours, until it becomes the consist- 
ency of thick cream. Strain through 
a puree strainer very thoroughly be- 
fore serving. One pint of this prep- 
aration to constitute the entire allow- 
ance per person for breakfast. No 
bread. 

Lunch: 

l_Raw vegetable salad (grated carrots, 
parsley and black olives on lettuce, 
dressed with olive oil) . 
Ill 



2 — Brazil nuts — two or three. 
3 — Slice of well-baked, whole-wheat bread- 
Dinner: 

1 — Boiled onions (cooked with parsley). 

2 — Stewed carrots. 

3 — Broiled sirloin steak (one portion not 

to exceed three ounces. 
4 — Whole-wheat zweibach. 

At bedtime: 

A well ripe apple. 

Tuesday. 
Breakfast: 

1 — Stewed raisins. (See footnote.) 

2 — Cheese sandwich. (American cheese 

melted over a slice of whole-wheat 

toast.) 

Lunch: 

1 — Raw vegetable salad (green onions, 
fresh tomatoes, parsley or lettuce 
with mayonnaise dressing, containing 
a mere dash of lemon juice). 

2 — Pecan nuts. 

3 — Whole-wheat zweibach. 



FOOTNOTE. — Though not in strict conformity with die- 
tetic principles, to mix acids and starches — raisins and bread 
— such a combination can be rendered safe if the starch of 
the bread is first destroyed by a process of intense heat, 
through second baking. This gives us the zweibach — twice 
baked bread — in which the starch is reduced into_ dextrine, 
and consequently is no longer subject to fermentation. 



112 



Dinner: 

1 — Baked Irish potatoes. 

2 — Summer squash with parsley. 

3 — Roast leg of lamb (three ounces). No 
bread or cereals. 

At bedtime: 

A raw, juicy apple. 

Wednesday. 
Breakfast. 

1 — Baked apple. 

2 — Poached eggon shredded wheat biscuit. 
Cow's butter. 

Lunch: 

1 — Salad (Raw grated carrots, turnips 
with parsley and lettuce, dressed 
with olive oil or mayonnaise. 

2 — Cornmeal mush (cooked two hours). 
Cow's butter. No Bread. 

Dinner: 

1 — Boiled cauliflower. 
2 — Stewed carrots with parsley. 
3 — Baked omelet. 

4 — Unpolished rice. Cow's butter. No 
bread. 

At bedtime: 

Raw apple. 

113 



Thursday. 
Breakfast: 

1 — Stewed prunes. 

2 — Crisply toasted whole-wheat bread. 

3 — Peanut butter. 

Lunch: 

1 — Raw vegetable salad (celery, parsley 
and ripe olives on lettuce with may- 
onnaise dressing). 

2 — Four English walnuts. 

3 — Boston brown bread (without the rais- 
ins). 

Dinner: 

1 — Baked Irish potato. 

2 — Cottage cheese with chopped green on- 
ions spread on top. Cow's butter. 
No bread. 

At bedtime: 

Raw apple. 

Friday. 
Breakfast: 

1 — Stewed or steamed figs. 

2 — Bacon — small slice — crisp. 

3 — Toasted triscuit. No bread. 
Lunch: 

1 — Raw tomato, stuffed with green pep- 
pers, parsley, chopped walnuts and 
black olives on lettuce. 

2 — Crisp whole-wheat toast. 

114 



Dinner: 

1 — Surf -fish or Whiting with parsley dress- 
ing (made from whole- wheat flour 
beaten with butter and chopped pars- 
ley). 

2 — Buttered beets. 

3 — Unpolished rice. 

At bedtime: 

Raw apple. 

Saturday. 
Breakfast: 

1 — Stewed dried peaches. 
2 — Soft boiled egg. 

3 — Whole-wheat toast (zweibaach). Cow's 
butter. 

Lunch: 

1 — Vegetable salad (cabbage slaw, parsley 
and chopped walnuts served on let- 
tuce with mayonnaise dressing or 
olive oil). 

2 — Whole-wheat bread. Cow's butter. 

Dinner: 

1 — Baked sweet potato. 

2 — Broiled Salisbury steak (three ounces). 

3 — Black ripe olives. 

4 — Chopped green onions. No bread. 

At bedtime: 

Raw apple. 

115 



Sunday. 
Breakfast: 

1 — Cream of Groats (prepared as onion- 
oatmeal-flaxseed cream) . 
No bread. 

Lunch: 

1 — Vegetable salad (raw carrots, celery 
and chopped walnuts on lettuce with 
mayonnaise dressing). 

2 — Roast chicken (three ounces). 

3 — Corn bread. Cow's butter. 

Dinner: 

1 — Hominy. 

2 — Cottage cheese. 

3 — Butter milk. 

4 — Chopped walnuts. 

At bedtime: 

Raw apple. 



FOOTNOTE. — Sufferers from diabetes, or any constitu- 
tional form of weak liver, would do well in trying the health- 
food preparation, "Phospho D. & D." — a flour put up by Mr. 
Dav. Harrison, Los Angeles, Cal., in care of "The Phospho 
Food Company." 



116 



CHAPTER XXVI. 



REMARKS, REMINDERS, SUMMARIES 



1 — Drinking at meals. 

From a strictly hygienic point of view, food 
should be taken as dry as cooking permits, and 
without drinks. The gastric juice is constitu- 
tionally so proportioned that any addition of 
extraneous fluids disturbs its chemical bal- 
ance, and weakens by dilution its digestive 
powers. Yet there are individuals whose hy- 
drochloric acid is too concentrated, and their 
foods too dry to admit of a thorough peptoni- 
zation of the gastric contents, and in their case 
a glass of water at the beginning of a meal 
would be permissible. However, the prompt- 
ings must come from the stomach itself, ex- 
pressed as thirst. On the other hand, in no 
case of chronically distended stomach, dyspep- 
sia, ulceration, with a manifestation of sore- 
ness over the pit of the stomach, should be al- 
lowed any drinking at meals. 

After having closely considered the state- 
ments presented in the chapter on coffee, the 
reader, if he should still feel himself justified 
to continue its indulgence, may permit himself 

117 



a small cup of fairly strong ' ' Barrington Hall 
Bakerized Coffee, ' ^ at the end of his breakfast, 
but without cream or sugar. Such an indul- 
gence may even be of positive advantage to 
him, as a physiological stimulation, if the 
hydrochloric acid in his digestive juice is 
weak. 

2 — Eating between meals. 

It should always be remembered that if the 
amount of food, consumed at a meal exceeds 
the available supply of gastric juice — the por- 
tion of the food, not thoroughly saturated, re- 
mains undigested. This, of course, means fer- 
mentation, and the formation of gases and 
acids, poisonous to the system. Hence the 
meals should be small and well masticated. If 
by virtue of these small meals, hunger should 
be manifest between meals, a little fruit — 
preferably raw, and in season — is not only ad- 
missable, but with the exception of cases of 
profound gastric catarrh or ulcerations — is 
positively advisable. The fruit should be 
eaten at a time when the stomach can be sur- 
mised to be empty, which ordinarily occurs 
three or four hours after a meal. As the time 
required for the digestion of fruit seldom ex- 
ceeds one hour, at least that length of time 
should be permitted to pass before the time set 
for the next meal. 

As to the order of the meals during the day 
it should be remembered, that whenever the 

118 



exigencies of modern life permit, it is advis- 
able to eat the meat at the noon meal, rather 
than in the evening. The strong, magnetic im- 
pulses generated by the animal substance 
when assimilated by the system, sends forth 
a wave of nervous stimulation, which lingers 
for several hours in the cell-consciousness, and 
disturbs a complete physiological repose. 

3 — How to prepare a Hygienic Mayonnaise. 

To prepare a scientific mayonnaise, have a 
cup of four tablespoons of olive oil, and one 
egg, ice-cold; — separate the white from the 
yolk, and beat the white to a stiff froth in the 
open air, using a Dover mayonnaise egg 
beater. Then take the yolk and beat it sep- 
arately until it is thoroughly agitated. Now 
slowly, by the mechanical devise on the side of 
the beater for dropping, allow one drop of 
olive oil at a time to descend into the yolk, con- 
tinuously beating in the open air until the 
yolk has "taken" the entire cup of oil — add a 
pinch of salt, a dash of paprika and a very 
little acid. Now slowly, a little at a time, beat 
in the stiff white, until the whole is a light, 
fluffy mass. 

4 — The different effect of vinegar and lemon 
juice on the system. 

The different effects which different acids 
have upon the human nutrition, are due to the 
constitutional needs peculiar to each individ- 

119 



ual. The acid of vinegar is catabolic or disor- 
ganizing — that of lemon is anabolic, construc- 
tive. The former is a spade, for the purpose 
of excavating used up, and worthless, mate- 
rial — (oxidation or acidulation downward, in 
the series of evolution) — the latter is a trowel, 
by which new material is wrought into con- 
structive forms — (oxidation proceeding up- 
ward, in the scale of progressive existence). 
Or, in terms of practical application: — to a 
person of the lymphatic, sluggish tempera- 
ment, burdened with fatty tissue, and with a 
diet overcharged with animal grease and 
heavy proteids, in the form of pork, beans, 
cheese, eggs, etc., — vinegar should take the 
place of lemon in his mayonnaise and other 
dressings. On the other hand, the person of 
nervous and high-strung temperament, with 
a diet largely consisting of carbo-hydrates — 
(the almost meat free diet) — should avoid vin- 
egar in any form of food-combination, and 
take his acid invariably from the lemon juice. 

Except as salad di-essing, when its nature 
is thoroughly neutralized by the emulsification 
with oil, acid should never be used in combina- 
tion with food. Free acid — in the form of lemon 
or vinegar — has the power to arrest the hydro- 
chloric acid of the gastric secretion, and hence, 
if taken in connection with food, interferes 
seriously with the chemistry of digestion and 
assimilation. Thus with the exception of its 
amalgamated or emulsified form, acid should 

120 



only be used as a beverage, diluted freely with 
water (one-half lemon to one glass of water) 
and used only at a time when the stomach is 
empty — early in the morning or late at night, 
and at least one and a half hours before any 
subsequent eating. By its disinfecting and 
germicidal properties — if taken in this form — 
lemon-juice is of the greatest healing and re- 
storative value to the stomach, liver and kid- 
neys; while, furthermore, its power to act as 
a solvent on the calcarious, carbonacious and 
fatty acid-deposits of the blood-vessels and 
general tissues of the system, renders the juice 
of the lemon one of the most important and 
constitutionally restorative agents of nature's 
pharmacopoeia. 

5 — Starchy food for the child, and for the man. 

Starch, as a food, refers more to the needs 
of childhood, than to mature age. The ac- 
celated growth of early life requires an amount 
of body-fuel, which, to the fully developed man 
would spell excess and malnutrition. Further- 
more, in the stage of childhood, the liver, by its 
enormous size — (more than twice in propor- 
tion to that of the man) — possesses advantages 
in dealing with starches, which are unavailable 
to later life. Of the cereals, wheat and rye — 
owing to their nuclear compactness — most 
readily lead to nutritional excess. Hence, 
whenever it is possible or practical, these 
grains should be substituted by baked pota- 

121 



toes, pumpkins, rice, oats, groats, corn, lentils, 
peas and occasionally — as in the low temper- 
ature of the north — the dry lima or navy bean. 
A rule, however, never to be forgotten, is to 
refrain from adding sugar to starches in any 
form. 

6 — Quick guide to hygienic food combinations. 

The preceding bill of fare is not formulated 
to be followed with dogmatic precision. Its 
object is to establish principles of practical 
application, so as to be readily grasped by the 
reader. The points, however, that should be 
strictly observed in any combination of food- 
stuffs, are to avoid milk as a table beverage, 
and fruit in combination with meat, boiled 
cereals, or vegetables. On the other hand, 
fruit may be combined with cheese, dextri- 
nated, i. e., hard-toasted or twice-baked bread, 
raw starch-free vegetables, and even with 
cow's milk — providing the latter is taken 
alone, blood- w^arm, at a time when the stomach 
is empty. The milk should be slowly sipped, 
and followed by the fruit, with an interval of 
some five or ten minutes. As further import- 
ant restrictions, it should be mentioned not 
to take cooked fruit and cooked vegetables 
at the same meal, nor two starches in the form 
of potatoes, bread or mushes in combinations 
at one meal. Hence, bread and mush, bread 
and potatoes, bread and rice, etc., by virtue 
of their incompatability and excess, will give 

122 



distress to the weak stomach. Animal fats, 
pork, lobster (all shell fish) — the meat of the 
latter being poisoned by their character as 
scavengers — veal (being unripe meat), and 
asparagus (an unripe vegetable), should be 
avoided in the careful diet. 

7 — The role of bread in the bill-of-fare. 

Bread has been omitted as much as pos- 
sible in our bill-of-far, owing to the fact that 
as a rule the American people are habitually 
addicted to too much cereal food-stuff, either 
in the form of bread, mushes or pastries. The 
great prevalence of catarrh in this country, 
which involves almost every organ and func- 
tion of the body, including vision, hearing, 
digestion, assimilation, etc., is in itself an 
evidence that starch holds at present an alto- 
gether too high percentage of use in the die- 
tary of the majority of people. The bread 
recommended in this bill-of-fare is the whole 
wheat — not the "graham," "cracked," "sun- 
baked " or " unfired ' ' bread preparations. Be- 
ing practically inti^actable to nutrition and 
digestion, these latter preparations retain 
their coarse quality in the stomach and in- 
testinal canal, where its sharp, non-reducible 
grain-crystals proceed to plow, like soil-cul- 
tivators, through the sensitive mucuous lining, 
to sooner or later give rise to gastric and in- 
testinal cramps and nervous spasms, owing to 
the soreness and ulceration of the lacerated 

123 



tissues. It is the ver}^ irritation, due to this 
internal lashing of the peristaltic nerves, that 
occasions the increased bo^Yel activity, which 
is held up as a cure of constipation. 

8 — Individuality in diet. 

No treatise on diet will accomplish its task, 
with less appreciated and applied individu- 
ality. For, after all, the last word on diet 
must accept individuality as a determining 
factor in any sucessful application of die- 
tetic principles. Individual differences count 
heavily in the results obtained through even 
the most carefully selected and scientifically 
determined diet. And as the mind holds the 
key to individuality, and determines its fluc- 
tuations, it follows that a rule of greatest im- 
portance to be observed, is to remove, from 
the field of diet, any mental influence arising 
from personal emotions. The mind plays 
upon the vital functions of the body as a 
player upon his instrument, and may intro- 
duce with the same effectiveness, the har- 
monies or discords, which, related to the body, 
mean health or disease. Mental processes 
such as anger, envy jealousy, hatred, fear, 
worry, passionate desires, etc., generate vibra- 
tions in the nervous system that are trans- 
mitted to the functional centers of the general 
metabolism, and more or less disasterously in- 
terfere with digestion and nutrition. Har- 
mony of mind and body, in thought, word and 

124 



act, holds the keyboard of life, by and through 
which the creative forces of health, strength 
and beauty are diffused and assimilated 
throughout the human organism. It is only 
through a harmonious attitude to life that the 
universality of a remedy, can adjust itself to 
the individuality of its application. 

Furthermore, in its relation to specific 
foodstuffs such as sweets and acids, the force 
of individuality must be closely reckoned 
with. As the nervous individual, by virtue of 
his high-tensioned, short-circuited polariza- 
tion, generates a larger percentage of body 
acidity than the quiet, self-possessed and 
slow-moving constitution, it follows that the 
amount of acid which would be beneficial and 
constructive to the latter, might prove de- 
structive to the former. Hence, it cannot be 
too emphatically pointed out, that a system of 
diet, though successful to one patient, should 
not be regarded as a panacea for every other 
sufferer, even when the symptoms of the dis- 
eases are identical. The theoretical value of 
a remedy lies, undoubtedly, in the nature of 
the remedy itself, but its practical value and 
success, must be looked for in the relation it 
occupies to the constitutional peculiarities of 
the patient. 

9 — Quantity and quality in diet. 

The question of quantity and quality in 
diet is very closely related to the question of 
individuality in diet, and must largely be 

125 



solved on that basis. There is no doubt that 
errors with regard to the quantity of food are 
no less disastrous than errors with regard to 
the quality — .though the cause, as well as 
remedy, for the former, must be looked for 
in the condition and attitude of individuality 
and moral will. 

In cases, however, of chronic dyspepsia 
and dilated stomach, when the latter through 
a long chain of dietetic abuses, has been per- 
verted into a state of functional abberations, 
and may clamor for renewed supplies of nour- 
ishment, even at a point of virtually bursting 
with undigested foodstuffs — the error may be 
more of judgment than of will. In this case, 
the remedy, and the only remedy, lies in the 
close observation of definite, well-ascertained 
dietic rules, carried into practice, with utter 
disregard for the abnormal cravings of the 
irritated, nei've-racked and unbalanced 
stomach. 

According to the latest statements of the 
science of Physiology, the supply of proteid 
foods (muscle-builders), required by the aver- 
age individual to sustain his daily wear and 
tear of muscle tissue, does not exceed three 
ounces. Practically applied to our general 
elements of diet, this means that the daily 
sum-total of our proteid-bearing foods, such 
as egg and meat, should not exceed five ounces. 

It is chiefly in an excess of the above 
named foods that the danger of over feeding 

126 



threatens. After a long series of experimen- 
tations and test-cases, Prof. Crittenden of 
Yale University, has authorized the statement 
that twelve ounces of cereals, counting as 
such every form of bread, mush, biscuits, etc., 
should constitute the limit of a day's supply 
of grain. It is safe to say that two thin slices 
of bread at each meal, or the equivalent in 
other forms of cereals, should amply supply 
the daily needs of that type of food for any 
ordinarily active organism. 

The absence of sugar, and preparations of 
fruit-preserves at the dining table, minimizes 
the danger of overeating. There is no greater 
tempter to gluttony than sweets in any form, 
and without the stimulation of the latter, the 
abnormal craving due to the irritating condi- 
ment, will soon give way to a calm, natural 
state of gastric sensation, with an appetite ex- 
pressing only the true nutritional needs of the 
system. The line of safety in matters of diet 
must always be found on the minimum rather 
than the maximum side of quantity — even at 
running the risk of under-eating. As ex- 
pressed by Oliver Wendall Holmes— himself 
a physician — "A person seldom has cause to 
regret that he eats tooi little." The small 
meal , well masticated, has twice the nutri- 
tional value of the larger meal, hastily and 
carelessly gulped down. 

Nor should the principle of vital expense, 
as involved in digestion, be left out of con- 

127 



sideration in determining the quantity and 
quality of food. Digestion means physiolog- 
ical expenditure, which in an elaborate, in- 
congruously mixed and carlessly masticated 
dinner, may exceed the entire nutritional 
value of the meal! The saving of vitality in 
relation to digestion may often mean more to 
the generation and preservation of efficiency, 
than a reckless indulgence in high-nutritional, 
but stomach-distressing foodstuffs. It is not 
what we eat, that determines our health and 
vital powers, but what we assimilate under 
least functional distress and expenditure. 
The key to the quantity and quality of diet 
lies in a careful maintenance of balance be- 
tween the maximum of nourishment and the 
minimum of digestive labors, coupled with 
a menu derived from natural, non-concen- 
trated, non-extracted and non-sweetened food- 
stuffs. 

10 — The problem of salt in diet. 

The complex action which salt exerts upon 
our bodies can be expressed only in its re- 
lation to the temperament and condition of 
the individual who uses it. An elemental 
stimulant, salt has a stirring and stimulating 
effect on the system, and should, therefore, be 
used only in combination with foods which 
have lost their native salt-stimulation through 
some devitalizing process, like cooking; or by 
persons whose sluggishness of digestion and 
general low tone of innervation, may require 

128 



the stirring, promoting action of the saline 
principle. But the same impulse which acts 
as a helpful stimulant for the sluggish be- 
comes a lashing irritant to the already over- 
stimulated and nervous; while, furthermore, 
the increase of assimilative effectiveness given 
by the action of salt to foods, devitalized 
through cooking, if applied to fresh, uncooked 
foods, will revert into an excess of digestive 
stimulation, and become a disturbing irritant 
in place of a physiologival promoter of the 
activities. 

For the value of salt as an assimilative 
agent is lost, or perverted, the moment we in- 
dulge in it to excess. When more salt is taken 
into our system than its cellular activities can 
evaporate or eliminate, a crystalization takes 
place, which, if permitted to increase, gradu- 
ally leads to a chronic sluggishness and stag- 
nation of the circulation, accompanied by a 
stiffness of joints, hardening of tissues, rheu- 
matic pains, and the general symptoms of pre- 
mature old age. 

This behavior of salt has an explanation 
in its unique position of being at once a solid 
and a fluid — at one pole crystalizing, and at 
the other evaporating. Through this dual 
action of its molecules, salt keeps up the 
endless chain of ascending and descending 
waters; of the ocean evaporating into clouds, 
and the subsequent precipitation of the latter 
into rain — again to return to the ocean. The 

129 



crystalization at its base, causes evaporation 
at the surface of its medium, whether the 
latter consists in the major processes of at- 
mospheric exchanges, or in the minor pro- 
cesses of conservation and preservation of 
foodstuffs . The same elemental principle is 
at work — the constantly stirring, changing, 
promoting action of the salt, making stagna- 
tion and decomposition of its media impos- 
sible. 

Now, salt as an element in our diet depends 
for its usefulness or physiological legitimacy 
on the condition of the food, and the tempera- 
ment of the individual. In their fresh, nat- 
ural,un-cooked otate no foods should be sea- 
soned. Grains, vegetables, fruits, come to us 
from the great laboratory of elemental nature, 
completely equipped with powers to adjust 
themselves to the functional needs and necess- 
ities of human physiology, and its chemistry 
of digestion and assimilation. Hence, to add 
salt to raw food, creates an over-plus of func- 
tional action, and an excess of enervation, 
which, by adding undue momentum to the 
digestive processes, in place of being a physio- 
logical stimulant — as in the case of cooked 
foodstuffs — becomes a downright pathological 
irritant. 

The same restriction, or proviso, is placed 
on the employment of salt in relation to indi- 
viduality. The nervous temperament, being 
of the electric type, possesses in its own con- 

130 



stitutional make-up sufficient energy and cel- 
lular momentum to furnish its own functional 
promotion. Hence, this class of people, to 
avoid interior irritation and subsequent in- 
crease of nervousness, should be very careful 
in their use of salt, even in relation to cooked 
food. 

On the other hand, the type of diseases 
generated by an excess of salt in diet, is not 
found in afflictions of the nerves, but of the 
muscles; not in neuralgia, neuritis, or any neu- 
rotic type, but in rheumatism, lumbago, sciati- 
ca and general muscular hardenings. The pa- 
thology of the nerves is referable to constitu- 
tional, bacterial acidity— organized acids— the 
pathology of the muscles to saline crystalli- 
zation. Hence, if nervousness is manifested in 
specific functional, especially digestive, dis- 
orders—saline solutions, both in external and 
internal applications, are valuable correctives. 
In cases of catrrh, which is also a disease of 
nervous functioning, the free use of salt, both 
mternally and externally — both as nasal 
douch, mouth wash, rectal infusion, and as 
internal medicine (in the latter case, one-half 
teaspoon of salt, dissolved in a glass of water, 
taken early in the morning, substituted twice 
a week by a glass of diluted lemon juice) is 
of great value to a catarrh-infected system. 
11— Yougurth, and its dietetic significance 
Though Professor Metchnikoff originally 
introduced ''yougurth" as an antidote against 

131 



the putrefactive bacteria of the human colon, 
he soon realized that the microbe-killer, inocu- 
lated in the system by the "yougurth," after 
having succeeded in cleaning out the native 
microbe of the intestine, proved to be a more 
difficult and dangerous tenant to handle than 
the one gotten rid of. In other words, the 
"yougurth'^ microbe holds the same relation 
to the cells and tissues of the human organism 
as the English sparrow to the Australian grain 
fields, where it had been sent to clean out the 
bugs and worms that menaced the seed. When 
the worms were gone, however, the sparrow, 
to sustain its own existance, proceeded to at- 
tack the grain itself, and thus became a far 
greater menace to the farmer than the old 
worm. 

This practice of inoculating the human sys- 
tem with organized, laboratory-hatched mi- 
crobe-killers, whether in the form of bever- 
ages, inhalations or serums, is a very costly 
business to the economy of human physiology. 
Partly because of the fact that the torn and 
racked body has to provide the battle field for 
the contending forces, and, partly because of 
having to sustain the invading army of con- 
quest after the native enemy is routed — the 
drain of the alien occupation is experienced by 
the system in loss of strength, progressive 
breakdown and premature old age. 

And this in the teeth of the fact that nature 
has provided the human organism with a 

132 



** physiological defense," an ''opsonic" re- 
serve force, represented in the constitutional 
virility of every single cell of the body, in 
every speck of lymph in the tissues and in the 
mystic secretions of every "ductless" gland. 
In other words, the body is a commonwealth, 
equipped with a militia of organized protec- 
tion, perfectly adequate to maintain its own 
defense, providing its government is main- 
tained on a basis of natural and moral laws, 
and in conformity to the eternal principles of 
love and labor, which God has placed in the 
construction of the world for the guidance of 
humanity. 

Be careful, not only of what goes out of your 
mouth, but of what goes into it. It is not the 
introduction into our system of alien uncon- 
trollable agencies of complex serums that the 
individual requires for his continued growth 
in health and survival value, but the com- 
mand of himself and a faith in the powers that 
work through him. 

12— The "Dreadnaught''— Stimulant 

The ruling stimulant of the world today is 
not the coffee, tea, beer nor even whisky — but 
the innocent-looking, pleasant-tasting, allur- 
ing white powder known as sugar. Its stimu- 
lating power is greater than that of the alco- 
hol, because it is the parent and generator of 
the alcohol. 

133 



Candy, says Dr. Woods-Hutcliinson, is good 
for children because it generates energy, and 
energy is needed at that age. Yet the energy 
which candy brings to the body is very much 
like the energy which the whip brings to a 
horse. In either case the system, in its re- 
sponse to the irritation, has received nothing 
from without, but spends its own constitution- 
al energy, derived from its own cellular stor- 
age batteries. 

As a fuel in the human furnace, sugar ex- 
plodes rather than burns. Like a wild fire it 
leaps through the organism along the different 
nerve conduits, up and down the pneumogas- 
tric connections to the head, lungs and heart, 
while the vital detonations send ganglionic 
shocks to every general or specific center of 
sensation — from the hair follicles of the scalp, 
tympanum of the ear, optic nerve of the eye, 
to the sciatic of the leg — lashing the involved 
functions into a convulsive activity, which is 
interpreted as strength and virility, but in 
reality is a deep-wrought vital loss to the sys- 
tem. For, like money, energy manifests only 
in its spending — not in its making. 

When sugar, and with sugar is meant its 
extracted form, not as it is found in the fruit, 
comes in contact with starch or proteids in the 
stomach, it brings about the same chemical 
processes as when that combination occurs in 
the brewery or distillery. It starts series of 
fermentation, which means a breaking down 

134 



of oxygen and carbon and a setting free of 
alcohol and carbon dioxide. Being thus bathed 
in alcohol, the nerves become intoxicated and 
the individual imbued with that feeling of 
power and efficacy, characteristic to the open- 
ing movement of a spree. 

It is the general rush of the oxygen of the 
system to the field of the vital combustion, 
with the subsequent rapidit^^ of cellular ex- 
change and enforced metabolism, that gives 
rise to the feeling of strength experienced 
from the use of candy — a feeling which is 
identical in type and process with that from 
indulgence of liquor and accountable for the 
same habitual craving. Failure to supply the 
want means weakness and feeling of collapse; 
hence the almost irristible craving experi- 
enced by the candy habitue. 

In the light of these observations we can 
grasp the significance of the statement made 
in a newspaper a couple of days ago, that the 
co-eds of the Southern California university 
consumed seven tons of candy during their 
last term, which, distributed on each one of 
the girl students, would correspond to her 
own weight. It will also shed light on another 
phenomena in our present life: that seventy- 
five per cent of our school children suffer from 
incipient heart failure and the remaining per- 
centage from \dsional breakdown. 



135 



13— Dietetic "don'ts." 
AVOID— 

Fruit with vegetables 

Fruit with cereals. 

Fruit with meat. 

Mixtures of raw and cooked vegetables. 

Mixtures of raw and cooked fruits. 

Potatoes in any other form than baked. 

Cereals and potatoes at the same time. 

Bread and mushes at the same meal. 

Drinking at meals. 

Extracted, concentrated or fermented 

foodstuffs. Alcoholic beverages. 
Smoked, pickled or potted preparations. 
Sifted, shortened, spiced breadstuffs. 
Animal fats, gravies, soups. 
Milk with meat. 
Nuts with meat or eggs. 
Milk with vegetables. 
Salmon, eel, lobster, oysters, shrimp. 
Veal, duck, pork, mushrooms, peanuts. 
Dry beans — but in the form of puree. 
Candy or pastry in any form. 
Meat in any combination other than that of 

non-starch vegetables. 



136 



SUGAR AND SALT 

FOODS, POISONS 

Br 

DR. AXEL EMIL GIBSON 

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 

Author of "Prolonging Life Through Diet," "Individuality 

and Diet," "The Race of Life and How to Win It," 

"Destructive and Constructive Food 

Mixtures." 

"In this volume, the author has placed the problems 
of salt and sugar in an entirely new light — at once 
original, scientific and simple. The subject is ex- 
arnined from every angle and viewpoint of modern 
scientific research and the deductions arrived at are ir- 
resistible. 

''Notwithstanding its thorough, scientific char- 
acter. Dr. Gibson's book reads like a story ... It 
forms one of the latest chapters in the romance of 
science. The author shows, on a purely scientific 
basis, that sugar and salt are not always foes to hu- 
man nature, but, under certain conditions, when 
knowingly applied, may become life-saving agencies." 

The volume conies beautifully bound, and con- 
tains a portrait of the author. Price, Edition De 
Luxe, $1.20; Popular Edition. 85c. Address, 519-20 
Chamber of Commerce, Los Angeles, California. 



INDEX TO VOLUME 

I. Has the Popularity of Sugar a Scientific 
Basis? 
11. Analysis of Sugar as an Extract, and Sugar 

as a Natural Product. 
III. The Constructive Phase of Sugar. 
137 



IV. The Magic of a Chemical Formula. 
V. The Destructive Phase of Sugar. 
VI. Excess of Food — Failure as Nourishment. 
VII. The Philosophy of Excess and Balance. 
VIII. What Does, and What Does Not, Cause 
Rheumatism? 
IX. The Peril of "Free Sweets." 
X. The Place of Sugar in the Hygienic Bill-of- 

Fare. 
XI. Sugar, an Explosive Force in the Human 
Dynamo. 
XII. Can Sugar Alone Maintain the Expenditure 
of Muscular Labor? 

XIII. Sugar as a Fat-Former. 

XIV. Sugar as a Force. 
XV. Sugar as a Poison. 

XVI. Sugar as a Medicine. 
XVII. The Moral Application of Free Sweets. 
XVIII. Evidence for and Against the Use of Salt. 
XIX. The Fundamental Purpose of Salt. 
XX. Salt at Once a Preservative and a Des- 
troyer. 
XXI. The Meaning of "The Salt of the Earth" to 
Physiological Chemistry. 
XXII. When Salt Becomes a Positive Factor in 
Hygienic Diet. 

XXIII. Can the Body Absorb Mineral Substances? 

XXIV. The Fallacy of Dr. Willjamar Stephanson's 

Theories as to the Value of Salt. 
XXV. Why the Esquimo Abhors Salt in His 
Dietary. 
XXVI. Why Life in the Temperate Zone Needs 
Salt for Its Maintenance. 
XXVII. Correspondence Between "Free Sweets" 

and Loose Morals. 
XXVIII. The "Salts" and the "Sweets" of the Earth. 
XXIX. The Value of Salt as Medicine. 
XXX. The Value of Salt as Food. 
138 



FOOD OR POISONS 
Dietetic Qualities of Sugar and Salt Discussed 

It is seldom the case that you find a writer on 
either salt or sugar — especially salt — that is unbiased 
or unprejudiced ; therefore, when I come across an 
author, a man of wide experience, of profound thought, 
a doctor — not a mere layman — who gives both sides of 
the question without forcing his opinion upon you, but 
allowing you to do a little thinking on the side, it 
gives me unbounded pleasure to commend such a one 
to the reading public. I refer to Dr. Axel Emil Gibson 
of this city, author of "Sugar and Salt — Foods or Poi- 
sons?" 

In a previous article I reviewed his excellent book 
on "Prolonging Human Life Through Diet," and I am 
quite sure that those who were so fortunate as to se- 
cure a copy will not delay in securing this latest ef- 
fort as a companion to the former one. 

Neither of these books is intended for mere cursory 
reading and then be put away, but the more important 
passages should be marked and the books left on the 
reading stand or library table for ready reference and 
the re-reading of the marked passages. It is only in 
this way that you can refunction the brain cell and 
thus utilize the knowledge obtained. 

I cannot resist the temptation of quoting one pas- 
sage showing wherein sugar is a food and wherein it 
is a poison. The strict adherence to this principle, 
observing the caution herein named, may be the means 
of averting a severe headache, indigestion or bilious 
attack. — Edward B. Warman, A. M., in Health Dept., 
Los Angeles Times. 

Sugar and Salt — Foods or Poisons? by Dr. Axel 

Emil Gibson. Los Angeles, Cal. 

In this book Dr. Gibson has made a startling at- 
tempt to solve, on a scientific basis, the problem of 
salt and sugar, in the seemingly contrary influence of 

139 



these elements on the human body. The books forms 
a new chapter in the romance of science, and though 
bristling with scientific postulates, its force of logic, 
and clearness of reasoning, gives to its reading the 
charm and interest of a story. In its thirty-four chap- 
ters the reader will find unsuspected informations con- 
cerning the practical, medicinal value contained in a 
judicious use of sugar and salt. 

The book has 135 pages, large size, elegantly bound, 
and contains a portrait of the author. — "Health Cul- 
ture Magazine." 

Dr. Gibson shows a great command of lan- 
guage. He writes in a scholarly style. "Sugar and 
Salt" is his latest work, and forms a valuable contri- 
bution to the literature of diet, on which subject so 
much that is superficial and false is offered to a long- 
suffering public. It contains a portrait of the author. 
From Dr. Harry Ellington Brook, in "Brain and 
Brawn :" 

Sugar and Salt — Foods or Poison? by Dr. Axel Emil 
Gibson, $1.20. 

"Sugar and salt are the symbols of man's dual evo- 
lution. As servants, they raise him in the scale of 
life and power; as masters they destroy him. 'At the 
gate of every Eden hangs a two-edged sword,' said 
Mohammed. In the Eden of health, this sword is 
represented by the quality of sugar and salt." So 
writes Dr. Gibson in this well-reasoned presentation 
of facts connected with the use and abuse of these two 
articles of every-day use. People often wonder why, if 
they eat too much sugar or salt with their meals that 
their sense tells them that they have over-indulged. 
This wise book, of 130 pages, will show what has 
happened. It is demonstrated that salt and sugar are 
sometimes foes to the human race, and sometimes 
friends. — "Portland Oregonian." 

140 



Dear Dr. Gibson: 

.... You have written a splendid book which 
ought to give you a lot of well-earned reputation. The 
public needs a clearly defined understanding of the 
relation of their health to sugar and salt. 
Yours very truly, 
J. H. TILDEN, Denver, Colo. 

Have read your book on "Sugar and Salt." It is 
excellent and proves a profound knowledge of the sub- 
ject. Never read anything like it on the subject before, 
though so much has been written and spoken in regard 
to it. In your brilliant book I find the rock bottom 
truth of the whole matter. 

From DR. ALFRED METZNER, Jordan Sanitarium, 
Jordan, Minn. 

Dear Dr. Gibson : 

Your latest work, "Sugar and Salt," is a rare com- 
bination of the latest in science as applied to matters 
of vital interest, and told in a peculiarly pleasing way. 

Faithfully, 
LUTHER BURBANK. 
Los Gatos, Cal., Feb. 10, 1914. 

Dr. Axel Emil Gibson : 

Dear Sir: Your very interesting and ingenious 
book on "Sugar and Salt — Foods or Poisons" con- 
tributes valuable and intelligible facts concerning ail- 
ments which are causing too much of the disease of 
our time. Your careful work should receive the at- 
tention of every one who is interested in continued 
health and well-being. May the mission of your writ- 
ings continue to do good. 

Yours truly, 
A. J. GERLACH, B. L., M. A. 

Dr. Axel Emil Gibson, a recognized authority on 
diet, has brought out a new book entitled, "Sugar and 
Salt — Foods or Poisons?" It is, probably, the most 

141 



complete treatise on these articles ever published. He 
treats not only of the chemical constituents of these 
articles and their effect upon the physical system, but 
he also shows the effect upon the intellectuality and the 
morals of the consumer. — "Hygienic and Dietetic Ga- 
zette," New York City. 

"Sugar and Salt — Foods or Poisons?" by Dr. Axel 
Emil Gibson (Los Angeles, $1.20), is a book on an 
important subject that should be of wide interest. 
Nearly everything that we have seen heretofore upon 
the subjects of sugar and salt has been of a controver- 
sial nature, since most writers start out upon their 
investigations predetermined to defend or condemn. 
The present author, however, has taken up his subject 
in a wholly impartial and scientific spirit. He under- 
takes to show the value of sugar and of salt, the con- 
ditions under which they are helpful and valuable, 
even life-saving agencies, and also the conditions under 
which they are detrimental. He lays stress upon the 
differences between sugar as a natural product (as in 
fruits) and sugar as an extract. It is in the latter form 
that it shows its destructive phase, according to Dr. 
Gibson, though he also takes pains to emphasize the 
fact that even the extracted sugar has its value under 
certain conditions. He discusses sugar in relation to 
the expenditure of muscular labor, as a fat-former, as a 
poison, as a medicine, and as a source of immediate 
energy in an emergency. In a similar way he takes up 
the question of salt, what it is, its purpose and the 
conditions under which it is beneficial and detrimental. 
— Physical Culture Magazine, New York. 



142 



LB,%']5 



